


The Seven Soulmate Commandments

by The_Asset6



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, GW2020, Gallavich Week 2020, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mickey POV, Protective Mickey Milkovich, Racist Language, Shameless-Typical Language, Shameless-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:09:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25508008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Asset6/pseuds/The_Asset6
Summary: There were seven universal rules concerning soulmates, and Mickey Milkovich didn’t give a damn about a single one of them. Who said he needed a soulmate? He was just fine on his own.That is, until he discovered that his soulmate’s dumb ass needed rescuing.For Gallavich Week 2020, Day 7
Relationships: Ian Gallagher & Mandy Milkovich, Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 138
Kudos: 358





	1. Acknowledgement

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! I overachieved a bit on this one, so this is the first of seven chapters, all of which are outlined (and two already written) in case you are wary of WIPs. The plan is to update once a week, so you won’t have to wait long for the next installment. 
> 
> Two quick notes: (1) As this is early in the series and from Mickey’s perspective, there will be racist and homophobic language typical of his character from that time. (2) Kash and Ned will be addressed in this story, but as there is no real substance to their interactions with Ian (it's Mickey's POV, after all), I did not feel that it was necessary to tag this as "Underage." 
> 
> Enjoy, and happy Gallavich Week!

Mickey gaped at himself in the mirror, his eyes glued to a spot on his chest that definitely hadn’t fucking been there a few seconds ago. Well, it wasn’t so much a _spot_ as a goddamn _name_ , the last one he’d expected or wanted to see.

“Oh, fuck,” he whispered in dawning horror. Mickey had witnessed some fucked up shit in his time, but not even his worst nightmares could measure up to…to _this_.

Everybody knew the rules. How could they not when they featured in every movie, every show, every video game, every advertisement? His dad had never talked about them, had ignored that particular part of their upbringing in favor of teaching them more useful shit, yet Mickey wasn’t immune. He’d heard the stupid fucking gossip while he was still in school and watched all the goddamn drama erupt with his brothers and cousins when he got older. Talk about a bunch of unnecessary, obnoxious bullshit.

As far as Mickey was concerned, it was better to steer clear of that crap. What the hell was so special about finding a soulmate, anyway? He had plenty to worry about without adding somebody else into the mix, especially when he had no control over who that happened to be. A quick fuck with a willing partner? Sure, whatever. They were only human, and Mickey had needs just like everyone else. Romance? No fucking way. He had business to conduct—drugs to push, guns to run, and all the other shit that came with being a Milkovich. Not only would no outsider understand the intricate system of illicit employment his family had constructed, but they’d distract him. Fuck, if they weren’t from the South Side (and he didn’t doubt for a second that he’d get saddled with some rich shithead from Lake Shore Drive purely because that was his fucking luck), they’d probably even want him to _stop_. They’d tell him to get a _normal_ job as if that was going to pay the bills around here. Hard pass on that shit. The last thing Mickey was about to do was hand any semblance of fucking power over to some asshole who just _happened_ to be designed for him by the universe or whatever the fuck else was out there attempting to give him a hard time.

Apparently, the fucking universe was merely laughing at him now rather than making him take one up the ass, and not in the good way. Mickey had accepted his fate years earlier, although when he’d come to terms with being fucked for life, this wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind.

There were seven rules—seven commandments, to the smart-asses of the world—that surrounded finding your soulmate. Hard as he’d tried to avoid the situation entirely, he couldn’t erase the obvious evidence that the cycle had begun for him against his will. At the worst possible time. With the worst possible person.

Oh, but the universe didn’t give a shit about that either. All it cared about was fucking protocol. That was why it made them simple rules, easy to follow and fucking inescapable.

Rule number one: your soulmate’s name would appear in a tattoo over your heart when you acknowledged their existence for the first time, and only _one_ of you would have it.

Scientists had been trying to figure out that last part for a long fucking time. It just didn’t make any damn sense for a person to know who their soulmate was while the other waltzed around wondering if they even had one to begin with. More than one idiot had mistakenly jumped into bed with the wrong fucking person because they’d assumed that they had a tattoo with their name on it. In fact, it was supposed to be pretty common for the queers who didn’t want everyone _else_ to figure out that they were queer. Not that Mickey had any reason to think about that. At all.

Anyway, there was allegedly some kind of evidence that things were different centuries ago, but nobody could say for sure. It wasn’t a crime to have the same name as someone else and get the two mixed up, nor was it a crime to be a fucking liar. (Well, depending on who you were lying to.) Ultimately, science and politics and anyone who mattered decided that it all came down to survival shit, an _adaptation of the species_. If your soulmate turned out to be a raging douchebag or an ugly fucker, you didn’t _have_ to pursue them, and they’d never know the difference. All in all, not a bad deal even if you _would_ have to stare at their name on your chest for the rest of your fucking life regardless.

In a way, Mickey supposed he’d gotten lucky on that front, though that may have been the desperation talking. If those damning black letters were painted on _his_ chest, then that meant the fucking dick he’d been assigned by the universe had no idea what had happened when Mickey hunted him down the other day. He couldn’t blow Mickey’s impeccable reputation out of the water with shit he shouldn’t know. Mickey could work with that.

Or, more accurately, he could _not_ fucking work with that. This didn’t change anything. Mickey was no fag, and he definitely didn’t want any part of that soulmate horseshit.

Especially not with Ian fucking Gallagher.

Because _of course_ it would be Frank Gallagher’s kid. Of _course_ it would be some dumb fuckhead Mickey had never thought about or looked twice at until Mandy had come home in tears after he’d apparently _not_ tried to rape her.

Bright side? At least he had somebody to blame as he vainly attempted to scrub Gallagher’s name off his chest as if Iggy had written it with Sharpie as a fucking joke.

Lip Gallagher, asshole though he may have been, hadn’t told him anything he wasn’t already objectively aware of: his sister was kind of a slut. Everybody in the neighborhood said so. According to the rumors that spread through the South Side like a wildfire, she’d gotten around to most of the guys in her grade at school before Halloween, plus a few older ones for kicks. Mickey didn’t fucking care about any of that, though. What Mandy did was none of his business, and it wasn’t like he’d been a virgin for a long-ass time either. If anybody was going to judge, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be him. Still, that shit wasn’t quite what he wanted to hear from other people, nor was it something he could tolerate when he did. The Milkoviches had a certain status to protect, so regardless of whether the rumor mill was spouting facts or fiction, Mickey was honor-bound to fuck up every shit-for-brains who opened their mouth about his sister. His knuckle tattoos were a reminder just in case the rest of the neighborhood forgot that.

But the point was that if _Mandy_ was upset about a guy trying to fucking touch her, then that bastard needed to be dealt with no matter how young he looked when Mickey laid eyes on him and actually paid attention. Or how red his hair was in the instant it was visible before the storage room door had slammed shut behind him. Or how green his eyes were when they’d widened in alarm at the sound of his name.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” groaned Mickey, pressing his palms to his eyes hard enough to make colorful spots dance in the darkness. That was _not_ fucking helping the goddamn situation.

Neither was Mandy’s belated admission that it had been some sort of misunderstanding the whole time and Mickey didn’t need to murder the ginger fucker after all because they were dating or going out or who fucking knew what—which was that much more confusing if Gallagher was supposed to be _his_ goddamn soulmate. As a matter of fact, it made the entire debacle fucking worse. Getting sent to juvie over beating the crap out of one scrawny redhead was at least tolerable, albeit not really how he wanted to spend the next year of his life. Mickey had been in there already, however, so it wasn’t like he hadn’t figured out how that shit worked by now. Sometimes, it was easier to be there than home, though the lack of freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted was a definite turn-off. But given the choice between being locked up and having this dumb mark on his chest? That was a fucking easy one, and Mickey found himself grinding his teeth in irritation at the injustice of it all. In the end, the choice had been yanked out of his hands. Mandy had unwittingly made him initiate the stupid ritual he’d sworn off years ago for no fucking reason—the ritual that had apparently ignited the second Mickey had said his name. _Yelled_ his name. And then spray-painted it on a wall for good measure, just so that nobody missed the fact that Mickey Milkovich was _acknowledging_ Ian Gallagher’s damn existence.

Most people would have claimed that that was merely the way things worked. That this was nature taking its course and that he may as well not fight the tide. That it might even be _good_ for him.

They were full of shit. 

How did he know that this had nothing to fucking do with nature and that the universe was simply being a goddamn prick? The tattoo hadn’t appeared immediately after all that goddamn _acknowledgement_. It wasn’t there the night he stood outside the Kash and Grab, waiting for Gallagher to take his beating like a man rather than hide, pussy style. It hadn’t cropped up when he got home from Gallagher’s house after shouting up at his bedroom window where the little shit thought Mickey couldn’t see him through the blinds. No. The powers that be had waited. They let him shrug carelessly when Mandy told him to lay off, and he’d put Gallagher out of his mind altogether for a day. Two days. Three.

Then, the universe took a crowbar and smacked him in the face with it.

Cursing under his breath, Mickey snatched the towel he had planned to use before he’d remembered there was no hot water and decided to put his shower off until tomorrow. He ran it under the faucet, but there was no fucking point. The frigid water didn’t blot out the two words etched into his skin. Neither did soap. Neither did shampoo. Shit, he was almost desperate enough to try bleach but thought better of it the moment he reached for the doorknob. Keeping Terry from finding out that he had a _guy’s_ name over his fucking heart wasn’t worth the hospital bills or every single question they would raise.

And how fucking cheesy was that? It was already taunting him with its mere presence, but it had to be _there_? He had a whole goddamn body. The stupid thing could have at least plastered itself to his ass, where he could try to ignore its existence. Instead, he’d see it every time he took his shirt off, a constant reminder of everything he didn’t want and everything that he could never let anybody discover.

_Great. Just fucking perfect._

A sudden pounding on the door startled him, and Mickey leaned heavily against the sink when Mandy shouted from the other side, “Hurry the fuck up, dickface! I have school.”

“I’ll be out in a minute, so cool your fucking tits!” he rejoined testily. Given that this was all her fucking fault to begin with, he figured she could wait a little goddamn longer while he worked out what the hell he was going to do.

It admittedly didn’t take much thought: _nothing_. That was what he’d fucking do. So what if Gallagher’s name was on his chest? He’d met the guy once, if chasing him around a convenience store could even be called _meeting_. They didn’t know each other. They’d never even stood in the same room together. All he had to do was steer clear, keep his fucking mouth shut, and everything would be fine. Nobody would be the wiser, especially not Ian Gallagher, and Mickey could keep his life exactly the way it was. He was fine like this—always had been, always would be.

What more could he possibly want?

***

Fourteen hours.

That was how long he lasted until the stupidity grabbed hold of him and refused to let go.

 _The hell am I doing here?_ Mickey asked himself for the millionth time, leaning against the L supports right across the street from the Kash and Grab.

Fuck if he knew.

The day had passed like any other for a while. He’d made a few rounds to collect cash from the douchebags that owed him. Some had walked away in one piece; others would need to get their kneecaps taped back together sometime in the near future if they didn’t want a permanent limp to set in. He’d called his uncle to let him know when his dad was set to be released from prison, barring any unfortunate circumstances earning him another couple months like his last stint. (The COs took stabbing pretty fucking seriously. Go figure.) Then he’d sat around the house doing…nothing. Smoking. Drinking a little. Letting the unfamiliar quiet settle since nobody else was there for a change.

That was probably why he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, his mind taking every possible opportunity to angle his eyes down towards his chest. The tattoo was hidden beneath his shirt, and although his fingers itched to push the fabric aside, he’d repeatedly told them to shut the fuck up and left it alone. He didn’t need to sneak a peek to see if it was still there. For one thing, he wasn’t lucky enough to have been imagining it. For another, Mickey wasn’t sure he wanted to know what he’d feel if he had.

Correction: he _absolutely_ didn’t want to know. Because he didn’t _need_ to know. It didn’t matter. It was just a fucking tattoo. His dad had a million of them, and he couldn’t even explain what half of them meant anymore. They were ink—markings. Shit people got when they were drunk or high or bored or whatever. Who fucking said they had to mean anything at all?

This one was nothing too. It didn’t fucking control him, and it didn’t represent shit. Two words didn’t make him finish off the last of the gross store-brand chips that had been going stale in a cabinet for who could fucking tell how long. He slid his shoes on over his holey socks and went outside without them slithering into his head again. He walked down the street, got on the L, and rode a few stops without rubbing a hand over that same spot on his chest.

Yet he…couldn’t explain why he was standing there like a goddamn moron, watching the storefront as the sun set over Chicago and waiting for…something? Nothing? Everything?

Fuck, his head was spinning nearly as much as his stomach was turning. It had to be some kind of soulmate mumbo jumbo nobody told him about that had brought him all the way out to where this shit had started. That was the only logical explanation. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t what he _wanted_. He was simply adjusting after being blindsided that morning, that was all. A momentary weakness, nothing more.

A weakness that wasn’t going to tell Mickey fucking Milkovich how shit was going to be. Fine, he’d gotten here and stared inconspicuously at the window for a while—so what? He’d watched blurry figures circling around inside, his eyes constantly fixating on one with a carrot top and the skinniest fucking frame he’d ever seen—no big deal. He hadn’t crossed the street, not even when he’d smoked the last of his cigarettes and could do with another pack. He hadn’t done anything stupid like go _talk_ to Gallagher. Hell, Mickey could turn the fuck around and go home anytime he wanted. Fuck all that soulmate crap. Fuck Ian Gallagher. None of it had a hold on him.

He was leaving. Right now.

Or he attempted to. He really did.

Then he stopped halfway to the platform steps when the lights inside the convenience store went out, a hundred questions automatically whirling around inside his head as if they’d been fucking waiting for an excuse to attack him. Was it closing time already? How fucking long had he been standing there? Had anybody noticed? Did they know? They couldn’t know, could they? Or did it radiate off Mickey like the smells he _really_ needed to wash away once their water situation was dealt with? Was there even anything _to_ notice? Why would there be? He didn’t care, right? That was all that mattered, wasn’t it?

He didn’t have any answers, but it turned out that he didn’t require them anyway. The metallic sound of a door creaking and slamming shut down the alley beside the Kash and Grab caught his attention, and without conscious thought, his feet propelled him further along the sidewalk until he could see down the narrow stretch of the trash-filled access road. From behind another support pillar, of course, because he wasn’t _completely_ off his fucking rocker.

It was a good thing, too, because it would have been _real_ bad if there hadn’t been anything standing between him and that alley. Real. Fucking. Bad.

At first glance, there was nothing out of the ordinary about this picture: just Gallagher and Towelhead locking up and heading out for the night. Mickey assumed that was normal. Totally not fucking weird at all.

Until that middle-aged, camel jockey _faggot_ leaned down and _kissed him_.

A fifteen-year-old.

On the goddamn _lips_.

Venom seemed to flood his system, coursing through his veins and turning everything around him the same color as Gallagher’s stupid hair. His pulse hammered in his ears, and his hands clenched around open air he wished was that bastard’s fucking throat. It was sudden, that poisonous rage that unexpectedly outshone anything Mandy’s bullshit had elicited, and Mickey chalked it up to the fact that nobody liked a kid fucker. They were the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst. They made the Milkoviches look like saints by comparison, and his family had done its level best to put shit like that in its place anytime it had the nerve to move into their territory. Needless to say, a well of disgust he’d never felt before tore open the pit of his stomach to see a goofy fucking grin spread across Gallagher’s face as if he didn’t know how _wrong_ the whole thing was. As if he was actually _glad_ to have some shirt-lifter coming on to him like that while he just stood there and took it in his…really fucking expensive coat and shoes…

 _Too_ expensive for a kid from the fucking ghetto to be able to afford working part-time at a corner store.

_You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me._

Every nerve in Mickey’s body screamed to get involved, to cross the street and show Towelhead what happened when he touched what wasn’t his— _no_ , what happened when he touched a goddamn _kid_. (Gallagher still had chubby baby cheeks, for fuck’s sake.) That was all this was. The principle of the matter. Their neighborhood was shit, but it wasn’t _this_ brand of shit. Not while the Milkoviches were around.

All he had to do was go home, grab his brothers, and come back with an AR-15. Or ten. Break a few teeth, maybe some of the windows. Toss the place. Smash open the register and pocket all the money that the pervert was using to buy his underage employee’s affections while his wife probably had no fucking idea. Then they’d see how fast Gallagher wiped the smile off his face and realized that queer was a goddamn pedophile that needed to keep his fucking hands to himself.

 _No_ , then they’d see how fast Kash and Grab over there (and what a fitting fucking name _that_ was) skipped town with his secret blown wide open. That was the whole point: sending a message that this shit wasn’t going to fly no matter who you were or how hard you attempted to hide it, and preventing the neighborhood from descending that one final step into Hell _without_ the hand-basket to keep it from turning into even more of a dumpster fire.

Just call them your friendly neighborhood pedo-fag beaters.

Except…

Doing nothing didn’t come naturally to Mickey. Fuck repercussions and all that shit. When he saw something that needed to be dealt with, he dealt with it. Plain and simple. And this? This shit needed to be fucking dealt with, just…not with Gallagher here to watch or intervene or turn into collateral damage.

_The fuck does that matter?_

It didn’t. Obviously. Mickey didn’t give a shit about Gallagher. If the kid got in the way, he had no qualms about showing him the inked side of his fists. This wasn’t about _caring_ —it wasn’t about that goddamn tattoo that kept creeping into the back of his mind like a bad lay. Mickey didn’t want any complications, and Gallagher was the epitome of a fucking complication when Mickey was by himself with no weapon or backup. This was about evening the playing field, that was all.

So, Mickey took a deep breath and ignored the persistent urge to step in when that fucking fairy straightened Gallagher’s coat and zipped it up for him with a smirk that Mickey very much wanted to tear right off his face. He clenched his fists but resolutely held them steady at his sides when the faggot bent down to kiss Gallagher again and the latter did fuck-all to stop him. He wrapped an arm around the support beam and bit his lip to refrain from moving or calling out when they walked to the mouth of the alley together, Gallagher turning towards the L and his piece of shit boss driving away in his van.

It was cool. Everything was cool.

This wasn’t over.

Mickey would be back.

***

“The fuck you mean, _no_?!”

Iggy drained his beer, belched, and threw the can in the direction of the trash. Of fucking course, he missed it by a mile. “I told you. Me and Davey have to run those Uzis out to the skinheads in Fort Wayne.”

“Do it tomorrow.”

“That’s what we said yesterday, man.”

Mickey dragged his thumbnail over his lower lip, trying and failing to contain his irritation. “We got a goddamn pedophile in the neighborhood. Just gonna let that slide?”

“He _lives_ here. He ain’t going nowhere,” Iggy answered, utterly oblivious to the fucking gravity of the situation. As always.

“You know what, forget it,” muttered Mickey. He grabbed his coat off the floor where it had landed when he got home the previous night and stomped towards the door. “I’ll fucking handle it myself.”

How he was going to do that, he had no fucking idea. Fortunately, there were a few empty hours ahead of him in which to figure it out.

Eventually, however, he was going to need a tactic that didn’t involve sitting under the L looking suspicious as fuck.

Mickey wasn’t even sure what he was waiting for. It was morning. He was at the Kash and Grab. The fuckhead was sitting at the register just waiting for the pummeling Mickey was jonesing to give him. He could go in, do his business, and get on with his day in five minutes. Simple.

Or not.

The moment he prepared to head inside and shove Towelhead’s dick down his throat until he choked on it, a few different things happened to stop him in his fucking tracks. Mrs. Towelhead appeared out of fucking nowhere, for one, buzzing around the store and gesturing at him with all the energy of one super pissed off bitch. Mickey couldn’t see too clearly past all the posters displayed against the glass, but what he did catch was pretty fucking entertaining. At least he wasn’t the only person who was aiming to give that queerbag what for. And right in front of his fucking kids, too. There were two of them moving towards the door, watching the exchange while their fudge-packer father kept his damn mouth shut. So, he had some brains in his head after all. It was almost too bad they were going to be splattered against the floor by the time Mickey was done with him. Almost.

But that could wait awhile. He’d let Kash and Grab’s wife get a few licks in first. After all, whether she knew it or not (and he had a feeling she didn’t since the guy was still breathing), it _was_ her husband that was stepping out on her. With a teenager.

Fuck it, she could get in all the licks she wanted. Mickey was nothing if not generous and a goddamn gentleman.

And besides, he found his eyes drawn to one of the other reasons he hadn’t merely strolled on into the store for the most epic fag-beating of the year. Like his asshole boss, Gallagher had the good sense not to get involved in the fray, though he couldn’t exactly escape it either. He emerged from the back room with an empty plastic crate in hand, head ducked and looking like he would rather be anywhere else than passing conspicuously through raging bitch territory on his way to the produce, where he did…whatever the fuck you did with fucking fruit. Mickey had no idea. Mickey wasn’t even watching. He was _completely_ unaware of how Gallagher balanced the container on his thigh or reached out to touch each piece of produce with a frown on his concentrating face that Mickey definitely couldn’t see from where he was standing or selected certain fruits for the crate while others were shifted to the top of the stack…

Nope. Totally didn’t catch any of that shit.

What he _did_ see was Towelhead’s wife bursting through the door a few minutes later, both kids in tow as she strode down the street like somebody who didn’t plan to be inconvenienced for a fucking second. What he _did_ notice was that neither Gallagher nor the damn predator he worked for said a word even though they were alone.

And, because it was just Mickey’s luck, what he _did_ realize was that the Kash and Grab actually _did_ get a lot of fucking customers on a Saturday. Jesus, had these people never heard of a Save a Lot?

He was going to need more cigarettes. A lot more cigarettes, as the steady flow of customers didn’t pause for more than a couple of seconds over the course of the next few hours. It took two for Mickey to once again ask himself what the fuck he was doing there, then another on top of it for him to awkwardly shift the neck of his shirt so that he could peer down at where—yeah—the stupid tattoo was still staring up at him. Not that that had anything to do with his decision to lean back against the L’s steel supports for an hour longer…then an hour after that. What else did he have to do with his day? And besides, if he went home without having gone through with this shit, Iggy would never let him live it down. Well, if he wasn’t too high to remember that Mickey had even mentioned it by the time he got there.

Who was he fucking kidding? Iggy didn’t have enough brain cells left to remember what he had for lunch.

Which came and went, yet Mickey stayed right where he was. Shit, he didn’t even know what he was waiting for. The hustle and bustle died down as much as it was going to by late afternoon, and there he stood, out of smokes and patience alike and no closer to that fucking door than he had been when he arrived.

If anybody asked—and they _wouldn’t_ —he was staking the place out. He didn’t want to go barging in and end up cuffed in the back of a cop car, right? Sometimes, it paid to play shit safe.

And his reward came in the form of Gallagher slipping into that dumb fucking coat of his, waving goodbye to the object of Mickey’s ire, and walking out the door at the end of his shift. Maybe that was what he’d been waiting for all along. Not the opportunity to watch him walk away, hands in his pockets and a content expression that shouldn’t exist in their neighborhood—that would be fucking gay, and Mickey wasn’t here for that pussy shit. It was just that without Gallagher hanging around, his job was suddenly a whole lot easier.

To a point.

It was simple to glance both ways and jaywalk across the street while flipping off some asshole that honked at him. It took no effort whatsoever to shove the door open and scan the place to make sure that it was just him and the pedophile. He didn’t have to work at sneering as he wandered over to the counter and basked in the sweet scent of fear when kebab-dick recognized who he was.

And then something happened. Something Mickey couldn’t fucking explain no matter how hard he tried or how long he thought about it hours later in the darkness of his room where nobody would ever find out.

Gallagher’s smile. He could see it, right there in his mind’s eye as if the kid were standing in front of him instead of the bastard who’d touched him last night. He’d been beaming like he had no goddamn clue that this pole-smoker was taking advantage of him or that he was a plaything for some dipshit who would doubtless take any swinging dick to get away from his bitch of a wife. And with a flash of unexpected clarity, it occurred to Mickey that maybe he’d hit the nail on the fucking head. Maybe it wasn’t about the money or the expensive gifts he’d obviously been plied with. Gallagher probably _didn’t_ get the implications. He wasn’t too far behind Mickey in age, but he was still pretty damn young and didn’t have the benefit of growing up in the Milkovich house on his side. Was he too naïve or simply not so jaded to believe that this perverted game could be played under his own damn nose without him realizing? He had to be one or the other—perhaps both. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have worn that innocent fucking smile of his, radiating happiness at being wanted by _somebody_ as an apparently gay kid out here on the South Side.

Maybe he thought he was in love.

Maybe he went home every day wondering if Operation Desert Queer had his name tattooed to his chest, courtesy of the universe.

As much as the notion frustrated him— _enraged_ him—the mere memory of that grin paralyzed Mickey nonetheless, and he stood frozen to the spot while Towelhead watched him with obvious trepidation. Every plan he’d concocted while he waited for the opportune moment flew right out the fucking window because Ian Gallagher’s face wouldn’t leave him the hell alone. He didn’t even want to punch it this time.

He wanted… He wanted to _protect_ it.

This soulmate shit was the _worst_.

Not that that was why Mickey walked away. Fuck no. He did what he fucking wanted no matter which direction the universe attempted to push him in, and if he chose to crush that sack of shit, nothing was going to stop him. Protection? Please. Seeing Gallagher like that confused him, that was all. Anybody that had the balls to look _that_ happy in their neighborhood did. It was a momentary thing, a one-time distraction. Nothing important. Nothing _more_.

That crap had nothing to do with why Mickey tore his gaze from dick-breath’s face rather than hit it, ambled around the store rather than knock it over, and grabbed shit off the shelves at random rather than break whatever he saw. Hell, Mickey had all but forgotten about Gallagher completely when he strutted up to the counter and set everything down, frowning as he looked around for something to carry it in.

“T-That’ll be seventeen-fifty.”

Mickey’s eyebrows flew upwards. He didn’t say a word.

Neither did Kash the Kid Grabber. His eyes followed Mickey’s every move, but he didn’t utter another fucking syllable while Mickey casually reached over the counter to tear a plastic bag free of the rack and loaded his shit into it without offering any payment or response. And look at that! There was the grocery shopping done. Pop-Tarts, Gatorade, Pringles, bread, cheese, that nasty goddamn jerky that Iggy swore by—they were set for the next week. As an afterthought, Mickey even grabbed a couple of tomatoes off the nearby pyramid just to change things up a little. Plus a Slim Jim. Because it was right next to him, so why the fuck not?

“Nice place you got here, man,” Mickey drawled, peeling off the wrapper and taking a healthy bite. His voice was slurred around a mouthful of fake meat when he continued, “I like a good, clean spot like this. Got yourself a new regular.”

Honestly, he hadn’t thought it was possible for a guy of his complexion to actually turn green, but Towelhead was proving him wrong about a lot of stuff these days. It was gratifying, and Mickey had a spring in his step on his way out the door.

Because he wasn’t lying. He _would_ be back again.

And again.

And again.

One and done was all well and good, but Mickey occasionally enjoyed playing the long game when it came to serving assholes their own sacks on a fucking platter. And hey, at least it would keep his mind off all that soulmate bullshit.

Right?


	2. Exclusivity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! I'm blown away by the reception to the first chapter, so I just wanted to thank you again for reading! While this chapter still stays pretty close to the canon timeline, chapter three will start to change things up. The rating has also been increased to Mature for references to sexual activity, though nothing in this story will be explicit or described in any depth. (I don't write smut!)
> 
> Also, per usual, just a note that there will be homophobic and racist language ahead as it is from Mickey's POV.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the chapter, and I'll see you next Saturday for the next!

For having flown under Mickey’s radar all these years, Ian Gallagher was suddenly fucking _everywhere_.

He was all over the neighborhood. Nowhere on the South Side was entirely Gallagher-free with Frank prowling around, but Mickey could easily avoid him. Anyone who knew what was good for them did the same. His kid? He was like a fucking beacon that refused to be ignored. Mickey wouldn’t get a mile down the road from his front door before a flash of red in his periphery drew his attention to where Ian Gallagher was inexplicably stalking his senses. One day, he was jogging along the opposite side of the street from Mickey with his school shit; another, he’d be in front of the Gallaghers’ house, dragging his younger brother away from where he was terrorizing the feral neighborhood cats with a nail gun. Mickey would spy him smoking under the L beside Lip or climbing out of a dumpster with a miserable grimace as he impatiently informed his little sister that fucking Frank wasn’t in there _either_. His presence permeated all of Mickey’s usual haunts until he was reluctant to step outside the house some days, the tattoo on his chest seeming unbearably heavy whenever he thought about it. 

He was all over the high school. It used to be that Mickey could sneak in and sneak out with no fanfare to collect on the coke he so graciously put on layaway for these prepubescent pussies. Not anymore. The stupid ROTC would train on the football field, and Mickey would spend way longer than he should observing Gallagher in his fatigues, biting his lip so that he wouldn’t laugh every time the guy fumbled his rifle and glanced around to see if anybody else had noticed. Either his classes were all coincidentally placed in a giant circle around the lockers Mickey would wait near or he had a fucking bladder problem, because Gallagher was constantly passing him in the halls as well. (Not that he ever caught a glimpse of him. Mickey had gotten pretty damn good at not being seen when he didn’t want to be.)

He was at the Kash and Grab. Admittedly, Mickey brought those encounters on himself, although acknowledging that it was his own damn fault didn’t stop his breath from hitching a bit when he approached the building to see Gallagher puttering around the fucking place through the windows. That had nothing to do with the fact that _he_ was there, of course. Why would it? The thrill of grabbing whatever Mickey wanted and leaving without anybody saying a word about it—that shit would get you high. And if Mickey practically had Gallagher’s schedule memorized? If he made sure he was there in enough time to see the kid leave and never went inside to do his business until he was gone? It was simply because he didn’t want G.I. Joe riding his ass or calling the cops. Gallaghers probably didn’t snitch—they _were_ South Side, after all—but eventually he had to face the music and concede that this particular Gallagher seemed like kind of a goddamn pansy in spite of what Mickey was quickly discovering to be his weird fascination with the military. Better safe than sorry.

Funnily enough, that was the same rationale for why Mickey kept his distance whenever the guy popped out of the woodwork to remind Mickey that he was never going the fuck away. He wasn’t a twelve-year-old girl—he wasn’t scared of a fucking _Gallagher_. Regardless, the longer he had that goddamn tattoo on him, the more paranoid he became that he would fuck everything up, that Gallagher would somehow figure it out by smell or ESP or some shit if he got too close. There were seriously moments when Mickey thought his brain might just explode out of his ears if they inadvertently crossed paths one more fucking time. The mere passing sight of him was sufficient to make Mickey’s blood boil a little in anxiety, even if he never did say a fucking word to the kid.

Because of all the rules the universe had been attempting to impose on him for the last few weeks, the second was his favorite.

Rule number two: nobody else would be able to see your soulmate mark, not even the person it directed you towards.

That one gave him a choice, which was a hell of a lot more than he could say about anything else in his life on a normal day. Mickey hadn’t chosen where he was born. He sure as fuck hadn’t chosen to _whom_. He hadn’t chosen what he was going to do with his life or how fucked he was going to be for the duration of it.

He hadn’t chosen what kind of people he was attracted to.

So, anything that left him with a few options? He was on board with that, ready and willing to take the out that was built into all this soulmate crap. Sure, there was a level of autonomy with the first rule: Gallagher wouldn’t get a say if he wasn’t the one marked for life. But without rule number two, there was always room for the truth to be revealed against Mickey’s will, exactly like the reality of it had been thrust upon him because of Mandy. No one was going to spot his shame when he was changing or coming out of the shower or if it showed through the thin material of his shirt in the summer. For all anybody else could tell, he didn’t have a soulmate, at least not one that he’d met yet. He’d have to tell them, which was laughable when he was determined to bury this goddamn secret _twelve_ feet under so it never fucking surfaced.

With a tattoo that was only visible to himself, Mickey didn’t have to hide. He didn’t have to do _anything_. Nothing was forcing him to talk to Gallagher let alone inform him that his name was stained permanently into Mickey’s skin. It was his decision whether he wanted to pursue something. Nobody would ever discover the truth regardless.

Just him, and he didn’t fucking give a shit.

At all.

Especially not when Gallagher was at Mickey’s fucking house.

_Jesus Christ, Mandy._

Inhaling deeply and holding the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds, Mickey gradually let it out to the backdrop of his sister and Gallagher laughing in the other room. This was _his_ fucking house, yet it felt like he couldn’t walk through it in peace while those two were out there. Why couldn’t they go dick around at _Gallagher’s_ place or in Mandy’s room? Hell, why the fuck did they have to be friends to begin with? Yeah, he knew they weren’t _actually_ dating or whatever the fuck they wanted people to think. If they were, it wasn’t _talking_ or _studying_ they’d be doing on the couch, and Gallagher’s name wouldn’t be on _his_ chest. Mickey heartily doubted that the guy swung both ways. He’d been subjected to the sight of Gallagher and his shit-heel boss hustling out of the refrigerator with a spring in their step as they conspicuously straightened their clothes on too many occasions to question that.

Mickey gritted his teeth and chugged half of his third beer. Aside from the fact that he needed to take care of the South Side’s newly unearthed pedophile at some point, he really didn’t care about that shit. He didn’t visualize it when his eyes latched onto that name in the mirror every morning or fantasize about what that douchebag’s face would look like when it was black and blue and pressed against the floor beneath Mickey’s salt-stained winter boots. Nope. It was whatever.

So was Gallagher’s dumb fucking chuckle filtering in under the door and wrapping around Mickey’s brain like a goddamn boa constrictor until the distant hum of conversation was all he could focus on.

“It’s a double negative,” he was saying. “It changes the whole meaning of the sentence.”

Scoffing, Mandy replied, “Hello? That’s the whole point. The fat perv will just think I’m stupid.”

“When you’re actually saying what you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“Ingenious.”

He didn’t have to be out there with them to know that Mandy was preening at the high praise, and Mickey shook his head in exasperation. The fuck did she find so goddamn charming about Gallagher? He was basically Chucky, only without the homicidal tendencies—as far as Mickey was aware.

At least that made one of them.

“ _Soooo_ , are you going to tell me what happened with Kash?” wheedled Mandy as if literally every other topic—even English homework, for fuck’s sake—wasn’t infinitely less nauseating than discussing that fucker.

Nevertheless, while Mickey wouldn’t say that his ears perked up, he was definitely listening a bit closer now than he had been. For business purposes. Obviously.

There was a brief pause, then Gallagher asked, “What about him?”

That damn smile was in his voice this time, and Mickey fucking _hated_ that he had heard enough of it to recognize that. Even worse was that he could _see_ it.

_Get the fuck out of my head, Gallagher._

Mandy must have socked him, because he yelped right as she exclaimed, “Don’t be such a _guy_ , shithead!”

“I _am_ a guy!”

“Yeah, a _gay_ guy,” she retorted, lowering her voice so that Mickey had to strain to hear her.

“Shh!”

“Fucking _spill_ it, already.”

The ensuing silence pressed heavily on Mickey’s eardrums, and before he realized what he was doing, he was huddled up against the door just in case they were whispering too quietly for him to catch.

But he didn’t _care_. Mickey wasn’t some jealous fucking twink. He wasn’t even gay like Gallagher apparently was. (And see? He’d called that shit.) He simply needed to know exactly how far Kash and Grab was going so that he could issue a punishment roughly equivalent to the crime. Again, _business_.

“It was…still kinda weird?” murmured Gallagher after so long that Mickey was beginning to wonder if they’d gone outside.

“That smell again?”

An abrupt bark of laughter. “No, just… I don’t know. The hotel was nice and all—”

_Hotel?!_

“—and the food was good—”

_The fuck is this—some Bachelorette shit?_

“—but… It’s just weird when we’re not at work, you know?”

_It’s fucking weird when you_ are _at work, dumbass!_

Mickey wasn’t a paragon of patience or self-control. Never had been. So, it was quite frankly a goddamn miracle that he didn’t burst through the door and shout that in Gallagher’s moronic fucking face. Even more impressive was that Mickey’s ass wasn’t already down at the Kash and Grab, ripping that pervert’s balls off, small and difficult to locate as they had to be. Shit, this guy _really_ had no sense of self-preservation. A hotel? With some asswipe more than twice his age? Was he out of his goddamn mind?

With fucking Frank as his father, Mickey didn’t know why he was bothering to wonder. Soulmate shit aside, this was just _sick_ on _so_ many levels.

“Besides, it was like he was trying way too hard.”

This time, Mandy was the one that laughed. “Hey, if _you_ don’t want all those presents anymore, I’ll take them off your hands for you.”

_Fucking knew it._

“That stuff’s normal. I’m talking, like… _flowers_ and chocolate-covered strawberries. Bougie shit.”

“Uh, _still_ not seeing a problem here.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re a girl.”

“And you’re—”

“Gay, not queer.”

For some reason, that brought a smirk to Mickey’s face. It sure sounded like somebody wasn’t as comfortable as he let on with all that mushy, sissy shit. A tiny spark of warmth absolutely did _not_ blossom in Mickey’s chest at that notion. Not at all.

“Fine,” huffed Mandy, her freakishly inappropriate jealousy over that pedo’s creepiness oozing into Mickey’s bedroom. “Did the sex make up for it?”

And there was the bucket of cold water to soak him where he stood.

Mickey jerked away from the door, wanting to hear the answer to that about as much as he craved a root canal. Even his own fucking sister apparently wasn’t right in the head. She couldn’t be if she didn’t see anything wrong with the goddamn situation. First Iggy, and now her. Were the Milkoviches losing their touch or something?

Not him. Not Mickey. He wasn’t going to let this stand.

He had some shopping to do.

***

All things considered, the plan wasn’t his most brilliant. Mickey was willing to admit that much, though it didn’t deter him from going through with it in the slightest. Ordinarily, he’d beat the shit out of his quarry and call it a day. That tended to be more than sufficient to get his point across, and it didn’t take a great deal of thought or effort on his part.

But this shit wasn’t exactly what he’d call _ordinary_.

Gallagher had it _bad_. His boss had fucking brainwashed him to get in his pants. Mandy was rubber-stamping his bullshit. Either his family had no clue or didn’t give a fuck. If Mickey went in there and did his usual thing—fuck, even if he called the damn cops on that shithead—it wasn’t going to end with Gallagher coming to his fucking senses. After two days of pondering and totally _not_ agonizing over it, Mickey had arrived at the realization that all he’d accomplish by going about this using his typical methods was making Gallagher hate him and gravitate towards that shirt-lifter even more. For the first time in his life, violence was counterproductive to his goals. Who would’ve fucking thought?

Oh, the beatdown was coming. He wasn’t abandoning that in the slightest. It was simply that he had a little work to do before he got to that. Long game and all.

That was why the first phase of his plan required waiting for Gallagher to show up to work rather than leave. He believed a coward who couldn’t do better in life than running a dinky convenience store was a real man? Yeah, right. That pussy was lucky his dick hadn’t shriveled up by now, and it was Mickey’s job to plant that seed of doubt in Gallagher’s head. To show him what a real fucking man looked like. A real fucking man who was seventeen and not old as balls.

_Then_ , once Mickey had crushed those rose-colored glasses of his, they could get down to the fag-beating Kash and Grab fully deserved.

One step at a time, though.

Gallagher was in the back room when Mickey sauntered inside, sneering over at the store’s namesake where he was counting packs of gum at the register. It was gratifying as fuck to watch some of the color drain from his face.

_You ain’t seen nothing yet, bitch._

Mickey took his time. He had a short list of shit that he did really want to pick up, and he was in no rush to be out the door. So, he wandered back to the refrigerators for a Gatorade. He frowned at the shoddy selection of chips and ended up selecting a couple tubes of Pringles at random since they were out of what he was looking for. He wasn’t a big fan of that sugary Drake’s shit, but Mandy liked Ring Dings, so he picked up a box of those and resolved to have her repay him later.

He may have listened for the sounds of a doorknob or footsteps. So?

It was pretty fucking fortunate that there was a box all set up and ready for him when he got to the counter, because the last thing he wanted was to have to reach around for a bag with the kid-fucker sitting right there. Instead, he dumped out the last of the gum and piled his shit inside, pausing for a moment to add a couple Kit-Kats for Iggy. His siblings fucking owed him.

And Gallagher needed to get his ass out here already. There was only so long that Mickey could fuck around before this creep started wondering if he had other reasons for being there.

_Hurry the hell up..._

A few seconds passed where Mickey pretended to be reviewing his inventory to ensure he hadn’t missed anything, but no one tall and ginger appeared. Not surprising. Gallagher only popped up when Mickey _didn’t_ want him to.

Not that he did _now_. This was business.

But another minute couldn’t hurt, right?

“Oh, heads up, man,” he told the dickhead he would rather strangle than feign civility towards. “You’re out of barbecue Pringles.”

The asshole didn’t make the mistake of responding.

Gallagher didn’t emerge.

_Jesus, what’s a guy gotta do to get some fucking attention around here?_

Leave, as it turned out. The door was swinging shut behind him when he heard Gallagher demand, “Hey, did Mickey pay for that?”

Fucking figured. There it was: the universe was laughing at him again. One tattoo—one invisible fucking tattoo—and suddenly Mickey Milkovich was the joke of the South Side. Fucking bullshit, that was what it was.

His irritation bled out almost immediately when he scowled over his shoulder to find Gallagher in his employer’s face, and not in a gross kind of way. He looked… Shit, he looked _pissed_. And his boss was avoiding eye contact like the fucking weakling he was, which appeared to increase Gallagher’s discernible frustration rather than quell it.

Well, what was Mickey doing out here? This was a brand of fun he definitely didn’t want to miss.

The bell tinkling above the door to herald his reentry brought Gallagher’s eyes right where Mickey wanted them: away from the pedophile that was imitating a kicked fucking dog as if he was the victim here. Yeah, the kid was glaring daggers, but who the fuck cared? Mickey wasn’t here to be _liked_. He was here to save Gallagher from himself.

On principle.

Fuck Gallagher.

Fuck the way he stood there not judging Mickey by the dirt on his face (he _really_ needed a shower) or his threadbare sweatshirt or the fact that he hadn’t brushed his hair in a few days. Fuck how his expression softened from anger to something a little more curious and intrigued when Mickey didn’t address either of them. Fuck the pleasant, prickling sensation of his gaze on Mickey’s back as he beelined for the refrigerators and that now familiar itch underneath his goddamn shirt. Fuck how hard it was not to grin when Gallagher’s reflection in the glass door stared incredulously and expectantly at the ‘mo he was sleeping with for not doing shit to stop him.

Fuck that minuscule piece of evidence that his plan was working for making him tease, “I forgot the dip,” on his way out.

Fuck the satisfaction of hearing Gallagher mutter, “Jesus, Kash,” over the sound of that stupid bell.

Fuck the buzz of being followed and garnering his undivided attention for prompting Mickey to offer, “You know where I live if you have a problem.”

And fuck how intoxicating it felt to know—not _think_ , but _know_ —that those green eyes were watching the show as he licked the remnants of his lost dip off his fingers and strutted away.

***

The second phase of his plan was contingent on the first, made necessary purely because Gallagher was a stubborn son of a bitch and _still_ fucking that fudge-packer after all the effort he’d put into emasculating the guy. Seriously, what the fuck? Being gay on the South Side probably made for some slim pickings, but he hadn’t thought Gallagher would be that stupid _or_ that desperate.

Well, desperate times and all that shit.

It wasn’t Mickey’s fault that he had to bring out the big guns. Figuratively speaking.

“Man, why does that camel jockey matter so much to you?” Iggy asked. Soggy crumbs of recently pilfered Twix bars sprayed out of his mouth across the table while Mickey iced his bruised knuckles on a bag of frozen corn.

“He doesn’t.”

“He’s all you fucking talk about. If I didn’t kno—”

“Finish that sentence, and I’ll rip your eyeballs out of your goddamn head,” warned Mickey. He waited for Iggy to hold up his hands in capitulation before he added, “Maybe _you’re_ the pole-smoker, fucking defending him.”

“Ain’t defending nobody!”

Mickey raised his eyebrows in skepticism. “Oh, yeah? Then why the fuck ain’t Towelhead in a wheelchair by now?”

“’Cause if I get popped again, my PO said they’ll put me in fucking _prison_ , Mickey. Too old for juvie now.”

“Since when do you fucking care?”

“Since I got a good thing going with the crackheads down on South Homan!”

“So, selling a couple grams to those tweakers is bigger shit than some pedophile living down the street, huh?”

Iggy had the nerve to roll his eyes. “How do you even _know_ he’s a pedo?”

“Jesus Christ, I already _told_ you.” Mickey paused, wincing when he shifted his hand to a colder spot on the rapidly thawing bag. “Practically had his fucking hand down some kid’s pants!”

“What kid?”

_Does it matter?!_

“I don’t fucking know,” he lied. It didn’t have to be convincing: Iggy was dumb enough not to notice.

“Why’d you fucking wait? Why not just kick the shit outta the guy when you saw him?”

That one brought Mickey up short, and he glowered at his makeshift ice pack as though every individual kernel inside was giggling at this gag the universe had decided to play on him lately. How the hell was he supposed to answer that? By all accounts, that was what he _should_ have done. Whatever excuse he offered would simply lead to more questions that he couldn’t respond to, however. He couldn’t tell Iggy that something had held him back or that this dumbass plot of his was meant to accomplish the same ends using means that wouldn’t hurt Gallagher in the process. If he did, he’d have to explain Gallagher’s importance to him—the importance he didn’t fucking have since Mickey was sticking to his guns on not knowing who the kid with Kash and Grab was. The South Side wasn’t kind to queers, and Milkoviches were the worst offenders. Mickey knew that better than anybody. Mandy was one thing, but Mickey couldn’t fucking _out_ Gallagher to his brothers or his cousins or his father. He would never leave the house alive next time he came over to study if he did.

Even if he didn’t mention Gallagher by name, though, Mickey wasn’t sure that any description would make a bit of difference. It turned his stomach to remember Gallagher’s open affection, and the thought of telling his brother that this shit was _consensual_ made it all the more sickening for a lot of fucking reasons. Plus, Gallagher wasn’t _that_ young. If Mickey said he was a willing participant, Iggy would write it off even more definitively than he already had.

Christ, they lived in one fucked up neighborhood.

With no good way to approach anything remotely resembling the truth, Mickey went for the next best thing: “You’re not the only one who doesn’t want to get locked up again.”

It wasn’t a complete lie, anyway. Juvie wasn’t awful or anything, but that didn’t mean Mickey was eager to visit.

Iggy’s shrug was one part sympathy and one part not giving a fuck when he replied, “Then let it go. Already knocked him around, didn’t you?”

Damn right, he had.

“Just leave a note for his wife or something. Let _her_ kill him.”

That…wasn’t a terrible idea. Surprising, considering who it fucking came from.

But Mickey wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of admitting it, so he merely muttered, “Whatever.”

He didn’t press the issue further after that. He didn’t point out that getting knocked around for having the gall to step in over shoplifting didn’t exactly send the message he was going for.

And he didn’t pull the gun he’d lifted right from the fingers that had touched Gallagher out of his pocket until Iggy left to pick up their latest cache of blow.

The asshole really had tried that shit with him, hadn’t he? Well, he sure as fuck got more than he bargained for in return. His fucking hands had been shaking; he’d trembled like a bitch. And he’d thought Mickey would be scared of getting shot by his dumb ass? Hell, he probably would have hit the ceiling instead of his actual target. That fucktruck should have known: if he was going to come for a Milkovich, he needed to make it believable, and his finger had better be poised on the goddamn trigger.

Lesson learned.

Mickey idly flipped the safety on and off with his uninjured hand, his eyes straying to the clock on the stove. He’d arrived at the Kash and Grab late, long after Gallagher had left, so the latter probably wouldn’t see his handiwork until tomorrow. While Mickey desperately wanted to watch his reaction when he got a close look at his his boss and heard that the gun was gone, a part of him was equally glad that he needed to go with the rest of the family to get Terry from prison instead. The gravity of this shit would need to settle, just like the dust this would undoubtedly kick up.

Let Gallagher be pissed off or whatever. Let him think good and hard about just what kind of guy he was dealing with behind that counter. Or in the fucking fridge, more like. By the time he took Mickey up on his offer to come find him—and he _would_ —he’d be ready to drop that wrinkly ball sack for sure.

***

The third phase of his plan… Okay, so Mickey hadn’t accounted for how far off the rails it went.

Where he’d expected Gallagher to be angry, he wasn’t. The tire iron presented a different impression, as did the tough-guy exterior that he attempted to paste over his cartoon of a face, but Mickey didn’t have to be a fucking rocket scientist to tell that there wasn’t any real heat behind any of it. Make no mistake: Gallagher looked irritated. It just didn’t measure up to how ticked off he should have been when Mickey had left a shiner the size of Milwaukee on his pedo boyfriend’s face and stolen his weapon. Hell, a declawed kitten would have been more intimidating, and Mickey nearly smirked at the apparent façade.

Until he realized what a fucking fag that would make _him_. Sitting on his bed and grinning up at his soulmate’s pathetic attempt at a threat? Fuck that. Mickey knew exactly how to deal with situations like this, and it wasn’t by giving Gallagher an opening to smack him in the face with a metal rod for not taking this shit seriously. There was a system to be recognized here. It meant having patience and some fucking finesse.

It included fists.

It didn’t include relishing in the feel of Gallagher’s skin on his when Mickey wrapped an arm around him from behind and his shirt happened to ride up.

It involved wrestling.

It didn’t involve a surge of adrenaline for all the wrong reasons when he ended up on the couch while Gallagher braced himself against the opposite wall.

It required physical prowess.

It didn’t require sloppily leaping on top of Gallagher when he dove for the tire iron in a last-ditch effort to regain the upper hand he’d never actually gotten.

It centered around holding strong to his convictions that soulmate horseshit was just that— _horseshit_. Any other day, that would have been more than enough.

Not today.

Not when Gallagher’s wary green eyes cracked open, his face framed awkwardly between Mickey’s thighs where he’d finally pinned the motherfucker down on the mattress. His gaze didn’t dart to where Mickey had wrested his weapon from him and was holding it aloft, prepared to bash his head in if he tried anything funny. It didn’t scan the room in a panic-induced bid to locate anything that might get him out of this mess of his own creation. Anybody else’s would have. But then, Gallagher clearly wasn’t anybody else. He was fucking Frank’s kid, so he had no goddamn sense whatsoever. He was Mandy’s friend, so he was obviously lacking in the judgment department.

He was Mickey’s soulmate, and that _really_ said it all.

So did something else that both of them could unfortunately feel against Gallagher’s skinny-ass chest, right next to where his heart was beating so wildly that Mickey could fucking match it with his own.

There wasn’t a rule about that magnetic pull, that immediate and irresistible urge to be closer to Gallagher than he’d ever been to anyone else. There wasn’t a commandment about how that sentiment appeared to be mutual, if Gallagher’s eagerness to go with the sudden and relentless flow was any indication. Then again, Mickey would be lying if he said that the fucking rules were anywhere near the front of his mind in that instant. Or five minutes later. Or ten. Everything shut down without allowing him the opportunity to pull his shit together, the inside of his head instead echoing loudly with unvoiced curses and the occasional silent _mine_.

_Mine._

_Mine._

His brain eventually came back online in enough time to remember rule number two. And it was a good fucking thing since that was the exact moment when Gallagher leaned in for a kiss as if Mickey were a queer or some shit.

He wasn’t. Terry would kill him— _and_ Gallagher—if he were. If he knew what they’d just done.

_Fuck._

This wasn’t part of the plan. This wasn’t happening. Mickey wouldn’t let it. _Couldn’t_ let it. Rule number two said that he didn’t have to. _Ever_.

It wasn’t too late.

Gallagher didn’t know, and that was how it would stay.

_Pull your goddamn head out of your ass, for fuck’s sake._

So, he gave back the gun. He told Gallagher to get the hell out in his own unique way. He quietly basked in the glory of two well-earned victories against Kash and Grab, one he’d intended and the other he very much hadn’t.

And that was _all_ he did. Because this was simply two guys blowing off steam. This was the unforeseen yet ostensibly unavoidable consequence of riling Gallagher up while showing him that he was dicking around with a fucking pedo. Gallagher was merely washing the taste of pussy out of his mouth and had used Mickey to that end. It didn’t _mean_ anything.

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note on Mickey's conversation with Iggy:   
> He is incorrect about Ian and Kash's actions being consensual. The age of consent in Illinois is seventeen, and Ian was fifteen in the first season. However, the culture that these characters subscribe to has indicated time and again in the show that they do not equate consent as a concept with the age of consent as a legal construct. So, while Mickey believes the relationship to be consensual, Ian is not actually of an age to legally consent. This was written intentionally.


	3. Memento

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! I have to say that I really enjoyed writing this particular chapter. Hopefully you'll see why :) 
> 
> Enjoy, and see you next Saturday for chapter four!

Drugs.

Ian Gallagher was like drugs. Heroin, to be precise.

One hit, and Mickey was hooked like a tweaking bitch.

That day in his room? In his bed? It was all he thought about. It was all he dreamed about. It was everything in spite of how frequently he reminded himself that it was nothing at all.

Not even the inherent danger of being discovered when Terry had walked through his goddamn bedroom without knocking could drag him down from his high or discourage him from wondering how to stave off the withdrawal he endured in the days that followed. This wasn’t as simple as a quick trip to Angie Zago’s house, which he absolutely _did_ try, fuck you very much. Not that it made a difference. It had no fucking effect on the mindless urge to repeat the same stupid decision a _second_ time. If anything, it exacerbated the cravings to a greater extent than merely jacking off on his own would. Mickey might as well have stayed home since all he could picture behind his eyelids were the messy red hair that his own fingers had made even messier and green eyes that watched him as though they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. And when all was said and done, it wasn’t Angie’s name he’d had to bite his lip not to utter aloud.

Never in any of their prior dealings had Mickey left feeling less than satisfied—worse, fucking _dirty_. The type of dirty nothing could wash away, not even the cold water that had rained down on him in the shower like a punishment.

And he _did_ punish himself. Or he attempted to.

Because he didn’t go outside, not even when he got sick and fucking tired of his own damn house. For nearly a week, Mickey stuck to the walls like glue so he wouldn’t risk running into Gallagher on the street somewhere. The little shit probably couldn’t be subtle if his life depended on it— _definitely_ couldn’t, given how dumb and doe-eyed Mickey had seen him get around Towelhead when he didn’t think anybody was looking. And okay, they _weren’t._ Nobody paid a damn bit of attention to some kid working part-time to support his South Side trash family, and it wasn’t like Gallagher would check to make sure he wasn’t being stalked and stared at through the store window as if he were a goddamn goldfish.

Of course, that wasn’t what Mickey was doing or anything. Far from it. Gallagher wasn’t that interesting. He couldn’t hold Mickey’s attention long enough to classify what he was doing as _stalking_. Fucking please.

But why get sloppy by taking unnecessary chances now? So, Gallagher wasn’t aware that Mickey cruised by the Kash and Grab almost every day to do more than pick up an afternoon snack. Whatever. That didn’t extend to a certain moment of weakness that refused to leave him the fuck alone. Maybe Gallagher’s ignorance of Mickey’s…call them _extracurricular activities_ meant he had no reason to act all weird around him before, but there was no telling what he’d do now that…

Well, _now._

If only Mickey’s reasoning satisfied the universe’s fucking vindictiveness. Then he wouldn’t be so irritated that the third rule was just as true as the rumors said.

Rule number three: like any good memento, your tattoo would appear when your soulmate wasn’t with you and vanish when they were.

To be honest, Mickey hadn’t noticed at first. After all, he spent no time with Gallagher by himself, and during the sole instance where he _did_ , there had been other stuff occupying his mind. Stuff that heated his skin and made his heart beat a bit quicker whenever he was dumb enough to dwell on it, mental images of the best parts of their encounter replaying over and over like a movie in his head at the worst possible fucking moments.

_Shit_ , Gallagher was _good_.

But anyway, a few days had passed before Mickey had realized that with Gallagher _right there_ , nothing had been emblazoned on his chest. The universe had guaranteed that there would be no mark to catch his eye and make him rethink every poor choice that had brought him as low as stripping down to let Gallagher do what he would. The tattoos on his knuckles remained; everything else on his body was as clean as that first day he’d waltzed into the Kash and Grab to deliver what he had assumed would be a well-deserved ass-kicking.

Those two fucking words had returned by the time he’d gotten in the shower that night as though they’d never left. Another punishment, except Mickey wasn’t in control of this one.

After almost two weeks of dicking around, he eventually pulled his head out of his ass so that he could get with the fucking program again. There was a job to be done here. Gallagher hadn’t stopped by the house lately, and Mickey was pretty sure that Mandy had inconveniently decided to fulfill his internal desires for them to hang out someplace else, which meant he was in the fucking dark with regards to how well his plan had worked. A part of him was confident that Gallagher hadn’t returned to sleeping with his piece of shit boss anymore, though he admittedly couldn’t be one hundred percent positive whether that was his own hubris talking. Mickey was no slouch in the sack, so it wasn’t like Gallagher would get better from that sleazy old cocksucker. Then again, for all Mickey knew, he might have departed feeling as confused as Mickey certainly fucking _wasn’t_ and kept up the status quo for the sake of comfort. And that was only _if_ there was no coercion on the shirt-lifter’s part, which Mickey doubted but hadn’t entirely ruled out. He’d seen stranger fucking things, okay?

Under different circumstances, Mickey wouldn’t have bothered worrying about it—not that he _was_ worried. He would have simply accepted that there were some people who couldn’t be saved from their own goddamn stupidity and walked away as Iggy had warned him to, preferably with a very kind letter sent to Towelhead’s wife. Then the ball would be in her court and Mickey could return to fucking up the rest of his life in true Milkovich style.

But those _eyes_. Those happy, innocent, expressive fucking _eyes_. One glance into them at point-blank range had made Mickey’s insides melt into a puddle of something he wasn’t going to even attempt to identify, and now he was back to hoofing it down the street to the L every day to check the status of the pet project Gallagher’s employment situation had become.

Heroin. Ian Gallagher was an extra concentrated, potent dose of heroin.

Mickey had never indulged in that shit, what with how fucking nuts it made people, but if it was anything like Iggy’s tweaker clients described? If it was anywhere near as good as filling his bong with the _best_ stuff? Shit, there was nothing better. _Nothing_.

Just like nothing could warm his insides on a frigid-ass winter day like witnessing the birth of a new dynamic inside the Kash and Grab. One that didn’t involve eye-banging and back-room breaks, thank fuck.

Gallagher was at the produce stand once again, a crate balanced precariously on his knee as he sorted this shit and that shit. From where Mickey was sitting on the trunk of some old junker in the parking lot, it appeared that he was absorbed in his task— _abnormally_ absorbed. It was fucking fruit. That crap didn’t take much effort to work with, yet Gallagher may have been defusing a bomb for all the extra care and attention he paid a few bundles of bananas.

Meanwhile, dickhead was breathing down his neck, as usual.

Well, metaphorically speaking. If Mickey had caught him _actually_ pulling that shit, he wouldn’t have been able to resist barging in there and putting his face through the front window. Repeatedly. Just like he’d do with any other pedo fucktard.

_Any_ other.

This was the only one on his current caseload, though, so Mickey overlooked the irrational twinge in his chest that a dumber fucking person would call jealousy. He wasn’t _jealous_. He was fucking _pissed_ that all his efforts—even going so far as to bang Gallagher—hadn’t put the brakes on that douchebag’s nerve. Nope, he had a hell of a lot of that to spare.

Those bedroom eyes watched Gallagher over the shelving unit Towelhead was restocking until Mickey was resigned to spending the next week fantasizing about how it would feel to stab them out with a plastic fork and deliver them to his wife on a silver fucking platter. They traced that skinny form with an obscene, lascivious lack of fucking shame that was _far_ dirtier than Mickey when he postponed showering while they waited for the gas company to turn them back on. His mouth was moving, making conversation that Mickey couldn’t hear and Gallagher seemed to be doing his level best to disregard.

_Whoa, hold the fucking phone._

That was a first, one that Mickey had vaguely hoped for but never managed to really consider too deeply beyond his narrower focus on making fuckhead pay the price all pedophiles should. During each of Mickey’s visits, he’d been subjected to the nauseating sight of Gallagher hanging on his boss’s every word like a bitch in heat. He’d laugh and grin and get that dumbass fucking _soft_ look when he felt bad for the guy. Whatever came out of his mouth, Gallagher ate up like he might never get another meal.

Now? Suffice it to say that Mickey was glad he hadn’t bet money on finding the same old shit, although he would gladly sacrifice a few bucks for the satisfaction of watching Gallagher mostly ignore the hell out of that asshole for a change. A tight smile marred his expression every now and again, matching his distracted nod in its insincerity. Not once did he open his mouth to respond or return his employer’s gaze. When Kash and Grab tossed an empty box towards the rear of the store and approached Gallagher from behind, telegraphing his intent to touch what wasn’t fucking _his_ , the kid high-tailed it to the other side of the shop faster than Frank could guzzle down half the Alibi’s liquor. All the while, Mickey was staring too intently to miss how he flinched in alarm or his knuckles turned white where they gripped the half-full crate or his entire body was tense with obvious discomfort.

A different Ian Gallagher. That was what Mickey was seeing.

And shit, did he like what he saw.

…In a professional sense. His plan had worked, hadn’t it? The kid fucker in there hadn’t laid a finger on Gallagher, and not for lack of trying. It wasn’t every day that Mickey could say he’d fucked some sense into someone. Why _wouldn’t_ he be pleased? In fact, a reward was in order here. Possibly even a victory lap.

That was what strolling inside the store right then and there constituted. The heady sense of pride when Towelhead’s face paled, the even greater tingling across his skin at the assurance that Gallagher’s eyes were trained on him… Fuck, it was the definition of triumph.

Mickey was momentarily lost in that intoxicating scent of success. It was everywhere, emanating from his very pores as he leered at that pedophile douchebag and swaggered towards the processed shit stacked across from the refrigerators. If he had to guess, he would say with absolute fucking certainty that Gallagher could smell it on him. Undoubtedly, that wouldn’t have been too difficult: Mickey _did_ make damn sure to get close enough for his fingers to inconspicuously brush Gallagher’s thigh on his way through that tightly packed aisle, after all.

And was met with the greenest blaze of fire he’d ever seen. Not subtle at all, as expected, but it didn’t fucking matter. Let his boss see that he’d moved on, that he had his gaze set on somebody else. As long as the dickface didn’t get it into his dumbass head that Mickey felt the same—which he fucking _didn’t_ —it was cool.

Everything was cool.

Except for Mickey.

Those emerald flames raged beneath his skin while he lifted two cases of beer and slipped out the door without acknowledging either of them further. Where he’d expected them to fade once he was two blocks down the street, Gallagher well out of sight, they instead grew into a towering inferno that had him itching to turn right back around and…

Pull some stupid shit.

_More_ stupid shit.

Even more stupid than ducking into the nearest fucking mini-mart and stealing a new burner phone.

***

“Carl, I _said_ , give Gin-Gin back!”

“She hasn’t talked yet.”

Gallagher’s redheaded little sister stomped her foot against the concrete walkway in front of their house and then leaned down to roughly yank a baby doll out of her younger brother’s— _Carl’s_ —grasp. Surprisingly, he didn’t put up much of a fight. That may have had more to do with the fact that there was a fairly impressive pile of tattered stuffed animals beside him than any begging on her part, though.

Mickey had a feeling he was going to like this kid.

“Hey,” he called, stopping on the sidewalk outside the fence. “Your bro—the _fuck_ are you doing?”

The toys, he’d spotted. The kiddie pool with tufts of synthetic fur drifting around on the surface of the water in the middle of winter? That made far less sense.

From the looks of it, Mickey was the only one who was confused. Both of Gallagher’s siblings stared at him like _he_ was the crazy person here while Carl answered, “Waterboarding.”

_…Leave it to fucking Frank to pop out a psychopath._

“What? _Why_?”

Carl grabbed a shabby brown teddy bear by the throat in a tight enough grasp to choke a man and, glaring directly into its sole plastic eye, darkly explained, “Because they haven’t given up their secrets.”

“Uh-huh,” murmured Mickey with a slow nod. He shot a sidelong glance at Gallagher’s sister, who appeared to be at least marginally less fucking insane, and gestured towards the little Gitmo guard wannabe. “He okay? Like, in the head?”

The mini she-Gallagher huffed, “That’s debatable. Last week, he put a goldfish in the microwave. He said it would’ve survived if it evolved faster.”

“ _Yeah_ , ‘cause of the radiation,” countered the pint-sized freak, holding the bear’s head under the water and jerking it around in one very fucked up facsimile of convulsions.

“It only works like that in _movies_ , Carl.” 

Okay, Mickey had already been on the fence about coming here to begin with. Now he was downright regretting it. But hey, if he had to be a party to this lunacy, he figured he might as well make himself useful.

“Yeah, whatever. You know that ain’t the same as fucking waterboarding, right?”

The poor stuffed bastard went limp in the pool when Carl turned to stare up at Mickey. “It’s not?”

_Jesus. What kinda garbage is this kid watching?_

Frowning in exasperation, he elucidated, “Yeah, you need, like…an actual _board_ and a cloth to go over their face and shit.”

Wordlessly, the kid took off running up the front steps into the house and slammed the door behind him. Talk about the poster child for the fucking nuthouse.

“You’d better hope Fiona doesn’t find out you’re the one who told him that,” Gallagher’s sister informed him, though it didn’t really sound like she gave much of a shit. It was more than a little unnerving how mature she seemed for her age. Hell, Mickey had been saddled with probation officers who didn’t speak or carry themselves like such a goddamn adult. Just when he’d thought the Gallaghers couldn’t get any fucking weirder, they exceeded his expectations by another mile.

“You gonna snitch on me?” he inquired with a raised eyebrow, oddly impressed.

“Nope,” she assured him, popping the _p_ at the end. “Gallaghers don’t snitch.”

_Great. One less thing to worry about._

Before he could get too comfortable with the ostensible confirmation that the kid’s older brother had probably kept his damn mouth shut about their…whatever the hell it was, she continued with all the confidence of any snot-nosed middle-schooler, “She’d figure it out anyway, though. Carl’s school is keeping tabs on everything he does. She only _just_ convinced them not to call DCFS and get him put in foster care.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yup. They think he’s going to end up in prison.”

Given that he was practicing torture methods on unsuspecting stuffed animals, Mickey sort of got where they were coming from. Didn’t shrinks say that was a red flag or some shit? Then again, on the South Side, they weren’t exactly swimming in options when it came to free time. You got high, got laid, or got the crap kicked out of you by someone who was getting high or laid. Not much else to do that wouldn’t get you in some serious trouble eventually. Prison? That was a foregone conclusion around here regardless of which family raised your ass.

So, shrugging indifferently, Mickey said, “Welcome to the neighborhood, Pippi Longstocking. Your brother around?”

“Lip?”

“No, the other one.”

She narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing him for so long that he nearly gave up and walked the fuck away. And yeah, he kind of deserved that. Mickey wasn’t sure if she’d been home the night he stood outside shouting up at Gallagher’s window, but if she _had_ and their roles were reversed, he would be curious too.

“Why do you want to know?” she finally asked rather than give him a straight answer. Of course.

“Got something for him.”

That was apparently the wrong choice of words. Her expression hardened as soon as the response left his mouth with the rest of his condensing breath, and Mickey was morbidly fascinated at how she protectively puffed out her chest as though she would take him on right here, right now.

_Fucking Gallaghers._

None of them had any goddamn sense. Even when he straightened his own posture to tower over her, she held firm and demanded, “Are you gonna hurt him?”

“Jesus Christ, _no_.”

“Promise?”

_The fuck do you care for, anyway?_

It was on the tip of his tongue, but Mickey bit down hard on it to keep himself from voicing his thoughts. If he was rapidly learning one thing while he stood there, it was that the Gallaghers were nothing like the Milkoviches. In theory, he’d already been aware of that. Frank was no Terry, and the day any of them got locked up for something more exciting than a DUI was the day Mickey would congratulate them himself on growing a collective pair. This went deeper than that shit, though. Nobody in his house would defend Mickey to some fucking thug the way Gallagher’s kid sister was attempting to stand up for him. They might have his back during a business transaction or whatever, but ultimately, he was on his own—and he wouldn’t have it any other way. That was how you built and maintained a reputation. The assholes around their neighborhood would denounce him as a pussy if they got the impression that he needed his brothers or cousins to protect his ass.

The Gallaghers were practically a different species altogether. Everyone on the South Side knew that Fiona stuck around and raised all of them when no one would blame her for a second if she up and left to get her own fucking life. Lip was some kind of prodigy with a head the size of Texas. Ian had the fucking nerve to walk the streets with a smile on his face like he didn’t have a care in the world being a gay kid around here.

And this real-life Wendy’s logo was ready to fuck Mickey up—or try her best—in order to defend her big brother.

Fucking Gallaghers indeed.

“Promise,” Mickey grumbled without looking her in the eye as he dug around in his pocket for the slip of paper he’d prepared that morning. “Just needed to give him this. He here or what, Raggedy Anne?”

“Debbie,” she offered after a moment’s hesitation, more civil this time. All that bluster leaked out, leaving the little spitfire that had been giving Carl shit a few minutes ago.

“Huh?”

“It’s _Debbie_.”

“Fine. Whatever. He home or not?”

Fucking _Debbie_ shook her head and replied, “Ian’s on an ROTC retreat in Wisconsin. He’ll be gone all weekend.”

Mickey grimaced. That would explain why he hadn’t been at the Kash and Grab when his shift should have begun two hours ago. Still…

“Ain’t it too cold for camping?”

“It’s supposed to teach them how to survive in harsh climates.”

“Fuck. No, thank you.” Wouldn’t you know it? _Another_ reason why the military fucking sucked.

Debbie didn’t seem too concerned about her brother being all trained up to get his ass shot, though she did tell him, “My dad says if it gets too cold, your testicles fall off.”

_Sure, he did._

Rolling his eyes, Mickey scathingly retorted, “Don’t listen to fucking Frank. The cold ain’t what got _his_.”

It took a second for the gravity of what was happening to fully hit him. Why exactly were they talking about Frank Gallagher’s nonexistent balls? Fuck, why was he still _standing_ here? This was _not_ what he’d intended to get involved with when he left the house. It hadn’t even struck him as a possibility when he’d discovered that Gallagher was nowhere to be found and made the dumb decision to stop by his place rather than try again another day.

What the hell was he thinking? _No_ lay was worth this shit, no matter how fucking good they were.

_Real fucking good._

“Anyway, just give this to your brother when he gets home, huh?” Mickey changed the subject quickly. Debbie took the proffered paper, sparing it half a glance and then watching him curiously.

“What is it?”

“Phone number. Mandy had to get a new one, so just tell him I dropped it by.”

“Okay.”

“Hey! Looking for some innocent bystanders to beat up?”

Of course, to top off the combination of absurdity and discomfort this conversation had dissolved into, Lip Gallagher _had_ to choose that instant to appear at the top of the steps. The cigarette in his hand plus his mere presence was enough to have Mickey retrieving his own pack. This was all he fucking needed today.

“Nah, man,” he managed to say around the filter while he struggled to light up. Fucking wind. “That’s Thursdays.”

“Good to know,” Lip replied with that smart-ass smirk of his. “Keeping the neighborhood in line one black eye at a time.”

“Shit job, but somebody’s gotta do it, right?”

Lip shrugged noncommittally, and Mickey didn’t bother to refrain from rolling his eyes at mister high and fucking mighty up there on his throne. He wasn’t a bad guy, but that didn’t mean his ass didn’t grate on Mickey’s nerves every now and again. It wasn’t obnoxious enough that he was the smartest person in the room all the damn time—he _knew_ it and _loved_ to rub everyone else’s nose in it. That shit had its uses, like the English papers Mickey got a discount on by bartering pot for a passing grade. When they didn’t have business to conduct? He was, to put it bluntly, annoying as fuck.

Almost as though the asshole could read minds as well as books, Lip took a drag and shifted gears. “Any essay deadlines coming up? Semester’s almost over.”

A puff of smoke accompanied Mickey’s derisive huff. “Fuck no. Dropped out.”

“Oh, yeah? What is this, the fourth time?”

“You’ve dropped out of school _four times_?” asked Debbie, eyes wide in mingled bafflement and amazement. Huh. Mickey forgot she was still here.

Shrugging, he replied, “Got better shit to do.”

“Was it official, or did you just stop going? Because Illinois state law says you have to be sevente—“

“I know what the goddamn law says! What, are we playing twenty fucking questions?” Mickey motioned agitatedly towards Lip and added, “Talk to Mandy. Gotta know some dumbass too stupid to fucking write their own shit.”

“Yeah… Yeah, will do.”

That should have been the end of the conversation. That should have been where Mickey spun around on his heel and left. It had been a bad idea to come here in the first place. Gallagher wasn’t even home, which meant he wouldn’t be able to utilize the number to Mickey’s burner until he got back. By that point, Mickey could just as easily have waited and dropped it off at the Kash and Grab or slipped it to him the next time he was over at the house. But no, he _had_ to jump the gun. Because he was horny. Because he was craving something he hadn’t gotten—hadn’t _attempted_ more than a handful of times—with anybody else. Because when he woke up that morning, Ian Gallagher’s name taunted him from its perch on his chest, a constant and insidious reminder that the universe didn’t like them spending yet another day apart.

Whatever. Spilled milk. This was a slip-up, yeah, but not irreparable. Mickey had done what he’d set out to do. He’d even played nice with Gallagher’s siblings, for whatever that was worth to the guy. Now, the discussion was fucking over, and he could get on with his day.

Or he could have if Lip didn’t descend the steps, pointedly approaching Mickey while telling his kid sister, “Hey, Debs, why don’t you go ask Fiona if Steve’s got dinner tonight?”

Mickey’s blood immediately ran cold. _Aw, fuck. Gallaghers don’t snitch, huh?_

How else was he supposed to interpret this shit? To an outside observer, there was nothing out of the ordinary here: Lip seemed perfectly at ease, free hand in his pocket and expression as unruffled as ever. But Mickey wasn’t a fucking idiot. This was the guy that had taken a beating in Ian’s place, even tossed around a few insults in order to make it worthwhile. Mickey had seen him do the same on countless occasions when they were in elementary school, that redheaded little twerp too tiny to take a fucking punch for the first few years. They were a package deal, Lip and Ian. Where one went, you’d spot the other following eventually.

If Gallagher told _anybody_ what had happened, it would be his older brother.

The older brother whose eyes narrowed shrewdly once Debbie shut the front door, leaving them alone.

Where Ian’s gaze set Mickey’s skin on fire no matter how desperately he attempted that stop-drop-roll bullshit, Lip’s was akin to a bucket of ice being poured over his dick, and Mickey shifted his weight uncomfortably for an interminable moment before gruffly demanding, “What?”

The silence stretched a couple more seconds while Lip blew out a long line of smoke. His expression didn’t shift in the slightest, yet Mickey heard the inherent euphemism—or perhaps simply imagined it—when he said, “I, uh… I heard you and Ian buried the hatchet.”

“The fuck you getting at?” spat Mickey, eyebrows raised in a mute dare.

“Nothing. Just glad you two worked shit out,” Lip elaborated. He inclined his head, and Mickey watched his mouth turn down at the corners when he continued, “The stuff with Kash and everything.”

_…Shit._

He knew. He fucking knew what that goddamn faggot was doing to his brother. The words drifted between them without needing to be spoken, making Mickey bristle where he stood. Lip _knew_ what was going on, and what the fuck had he done about it? _Nothing_.

But was that really so shocking? That shithead deserved to be in prison, where he could get anything he wanted shoved up his ass, yet it wasn’t like Mickey was making any definitive moves in that direction either. His reasons were probably the same as Lip’s: Ian was involved. Calling the cops meant he’d have to do interviews, sign statements, maybe testify if that wasn’t good enough to get Kash and Grab locked up. Social workers would stick their noses in where they didn’t belong. They’d likely want him to go to therapy or whatever. There was no telling if they’d use the fiasco as an excuse to take him away from his family, citing neglect or something equally fucked up. That was some heavy shit that Gallagher didn’t fucking deserve, heavy enough to bring the whole house of cards plummeting to the ground, and they were both well aware of it. Mickey didn’t want him to get caught in the crossfire on principle, but Lip? He’d never hurt his little brother that way. He gave too much of a crap.

Unlike Mickey. Obviously.

And somehow, he could already tell where this discussion was heading.

So, playing into it for the sake of curiosity—and fucking _nothing_ else—Mickey observed, “Ain’t worked out shit about that camel jockey.”

“Right.”

This time, Lip’s smirk wasn’t filled with the typical haughtiness that made Mickey want to punch him in the fucking face on the regular. No, he’d never seen this odd mixture of relief and…amusement? Was this prick for real?

“You know,” he pressed on after another pull from his cigarette, his tone deceptively innocent to Mickey’s ears, “now that you aren’t in school anymore, maybe you could see if Linda’s hiring.”

Well. He hadn’t expected _that_ twist.

“Why the fuck would I wanna do that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s honest money that won’t get you thrown back in juvie?”

Mickey’s middle finger was all the response he offered to that. As if Lip fucking cared whether he got locked up.

“Besides, I’m sure Linda wouldn’t mind the help, and…” Trailing off momentarily, he _actually_ looked slightly uncomfortable to add, “Ian could use the company.”

Mickey guffawed, ignoring how his stomach automatically squirmed. “Yeah, great selling point there, Gallagher. Wasting every fucking day with your kid brother at that shithole. What would I even be doing, anyway? I ain’t fucking cleaning up after people.”

“What about security? Keep an eye on the place, shit like that?”

_There_ it was. It was a veiled request, one that Mickey could hear from a mile away: Ian’s brother wanted him to work at the Kash and Grab to keep Towelhead away from him.

Oh, yeah. Gallagher _definitely_ spilled the beans about what had happened between them. The only reason—the _only_ reason—he didn’t make it his life’s work to murder the guy was because Lip didn’t seem interested in mentioning it outright. Unlike the rest of his family, he was too smart _not_ to recognize what would happen if he did.

Still, Mickey was going to have one serious chat with Gallagher when that moron got back from military Disney World.

For the time being, his initial urge was to tell Lip to fuck off. To inform him that it wasn’t a big thing, he wasn’t Gallagher’s boyfriend or some pussy crap like that, and to go fuck himself with his own cigarette. It wasn’t Mickey’s responsibility to take care of Gallagher. Hell, the kid was in ROTC. He didn’t need anybody to protect his ass if shit went down. Mickey had figured that out for himself on the completely rare and utterly accidental occasions when he _happened_ to catch a _glimpse_ of their drills at school. If Gallagher wanted to put his boss on his ass, he could. Easily.

But…

“You worried he’s gonna get hurt?”

_Goddamn it._

Lip stared down the street for a minute and then busied himself with taking one last hit before crushing the butt into the concrete beneath his shoe. He didn’t answer.

“By who?”

Still nothing, except now, Lip’s gaze met Mickey’s. The smart ass was gone. The guy that traded homework for weed and made his cash by playing the higher education system for fucking fools had disappeared. All that remained was a brother looking after his family. And that was something Mickey understood well. Moreover, it was something he could grudgingly respect.

“I’ll think about it,” he mumbled, flicking the remnants of his own cigarette out into the road and turning to head home.

He’d almost reached the other side of the street when Lip called after him, “I think you’d be surprised, Mickey. He’s not so bad once you get to know him.”

And wasn’t that the fucking problem?

***

The first words Ian Gallagher directly said to him that weren’t colored by his unspoken war with Kash and Grab were, “We just restocked the Slim Jims.”

Mickey wasn’t sure whether he should be impressed or exasperated that Gallagher was using fucking code names for what essentially amounted to a booty call. Yanking the collar of his shirt aside to stare down at the offending mark on his chest, he decided to go with the latter. At least the guy clearly deciphered what Mickey had given him the number for and wouldn’t make this difficult as fuck. Plus, it would keep his mind from wandering to the notion that his attempt at subtlety was actually a tiny bit endea—

_Don’t fucking go there, asswipe._

“Yeah?” replied Mickey, balancing the phone on his shoulder to hurriedly don his coat and scarf. “They gonna sell out quick?”

Jesus Christ, he was just as bad.

“Nah. It’s been pretty quiet today.”

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

He was only there for twenty, too. That was plenty of time to admire Gallagher’s bashful grin when he opened the door to the empty store and teased, “Got any Slim Jims in this shithole?”

It was more than enough to let his gaze roam unabashedly over Gallagher’s body as he locked the door and led Mickey to the back room, commenting about there being no cameras and sending what he obviously believed to be a flirtatious look over his shoulder. (In reality, it was something else, something… _sweet_ that Mickey was already positive he’d be tasting for hours.) It was sufficient to get their rocks off, which was sort of the fucking point. Mickey even spared a few seconds to wait until Gallagher was distracted with dressing, peel his own collar away from his sweat-soaked skin, and involuntarily smile a bit in relief to see that his chest was bare. Damn, that was two cravings sated in one visit.

But wait, there was also the simple pleasure of remembering that _Ian_ had called _him_ rather than hold out for his boss to show up. So, _three_ cravings.

Then, with neither a backward glance nor acknowledgement that this was indeed a booty call of fucking epic proportions, Mickey left Gallagher there to finish his shift.

But Ian was a drug. Ian was heroin.

And Mickey was dope-sick the very same night as he stood in the bathroom, fingers gingerly tracing the visual manifestation of his new addiction. To Gallagher’s appearance, of course. To how he instinctively seemed to interpret what Mickey wanted and needed, then selflessly gave it to him with everything he had. To how he didn’t ask questions or make a bigger deal out of their second time than he had their first.

To the vibrating in his pocket while he was on the L two weeks later, returning from a collection run that he’d only partially paid attention to since his mind kept reliving the last time this happened. And the time before that. And the time before _that_.

> **_Unknown:_ ** _Studying with Mandy, then work_
> 
> _Thought you couldn’t text on your sister’s phone_
> 
> **_Unknown:_ ** _Borrowed Lip’s_
> 
> _Better fuckin delete this shit when you’re done_
> 
> **_Unknown:_ ** _Already on it_
> 
> _Be there soon_

The funny thing about this particular addiction was that it didn’t reduce him to a jittery mess as he waited impatiently for the fucking train to reach his stop, although it _did_ have him making up the time by walking home that much quicker. It didn’t send him into fits of nerves or paranoia; Mickey didn’t squint into every fucking shadowy corner to see whether anyone could tell that he was ready to launch into goddamn orbit if he didn’t get his fix, like, _yesterday_. (Which, as a matter of fact, he had.) This was an entirely different sort of impulse, even if he _could_ equate the sight of Gallagher on the couch with Mandy’s legs draped over his lap to that blissful sense of release that accompanied lighting up his first cigarette of the morning.

Because Gallagher gave him the best fucking sex he’d ever had, yet…that wasn’t the _sole_ benefit to keeping the guy on retainer for when Mickey was in the mood.

Ian perking up immediately when he spotted Mickey entering the house was pretty damn nice. It was also fucking unheard of: if he didn’t come home to shouting and the typical dumbfuckery that tended to reign supreme around here, he was usually ignored altogether. Not today, though. Not on any of the occasions where Mickey’s phone lit up with a call from the only person who had his number. The churning in his gut and the incessant urge to drag Gallagher into his bedroom by the front of his shirt quieted, replaced by goosebumps rising on his skin despite the three layers he was wearing to combat the cold.

His eyes following Mickey’s every step towards his bedroom door wasn’t so bad either. Sure, it made him want to smack the guy upside the head since that little display practically fucking screamed that there was something going on, but he rationalized it away in the few seconds he had to discard as much of his clothing as possible. Mandy was fucking oblivious. Nobody else was home. Mickey _still_ wasn’t buying into this soulmate shit. Was it so wrong to take some goddamn pride in the effect he had on Gallagher?

An effect that did _not_ go both ways.

This was about getting off, not a fucking relationship. If that other shit made Mickey feel like he was on top of the world for a change, then who could blame him? Why couldn’t he simply enjoy the ride while it fucking lasted? There was no harm in that. Besides, none of it amounted to a damn thing in the grand scheme of the universe’s stupid fucking game.

He wasn’t captivated by Ian’s shy smile or wide green eyes when he slipped into Mickey’s bedroom a minute later, leaning against the door and grinning widely at Mickey’s careless, “You need something?”

He wasn’t impressed at how much cooler Ian played it when Mickey joined him and Mandy after they were done. There was no fucking way he’d pass up pizza bagels _he_ didn’t have to cook or the opportunity to thrash Mandy at shit she was reasonably good at. It had absolutely _nothing_ to do with his unshakable consciousness of Ian watching even though Gallagher’s eyes were carefully trained on the television screen.

He wasn’t enamored with Ian’s casual acceptance of Mickey’s silent offer to walk him to work. Not that that was anything like how it sounded, for fuck’s sake. They were merely going in the same direction. Mickey had a few more stops to make before he called it a day, and now that his libido was effectively satiated for a few hours, he might even be able to focus. It wasn’t like they had a fucking conversation or held hands or some shit.

He _especially_ didn’t get all warm and excited when, as he turned towards the steps to the L platform, he glanced behind him to see Towelhead approaching Ian with thirsty fucking eyes only for the latter to immediately put the entire width of the store between them yet again.

Because it was _sex_. It was _getting off_.

And hey, maybe that was all a soulmate really had to be: a damn good fuck buddy.

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note on the content:  
> I hope it goes without saying, but Mickey's opinions on the situation with Ian and Kash as they are written here are born from his environment, community, and character traits per the show. The unfortunate truth is that some people do feel the way he does, and that there are people out there who would not see this as the serious situation it represents. However, please remember that it is NEVER okay to let a situation like this go without taking legal action, whether that's initiated by going to the police or through an organization like DCFS. 
> 
> On a more positive note, though, we'll be getting more Ian and Mickey interacting directly from here on out. Some plot milestones will match up with canon, but...not in the way that we've seen. :) Thank you so much for reading and to those of you who have left kudos and comments!


	4. Disquiet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell you guys how boggled I am at the reception to this fic. Thank you so, so much for reading and for all the encouragement! Note: there is some minor violence in this chapter, and as always, Mickey-typical language. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy! See you next Saturday!

“Hey, Mick.”

“Hey. Thought you weren’t working today.”

“I’m not,” Ian replied after a beat of hesitation Mickey would have missed if banging Gallagher for the last six months hadn’t resulted in an awkwardly intimate awareness of his tells.

Quirking an eyebrow, Mickey switched the phone to his other ear so that he could retrieve a few dime-bags of blow from his pocket and hand them off to the idiot kid it had taken him a week to track down for the cash he owed—plus interest. Some morons were too fucking stupid to do business with.

“Okay… You gonna be at the house or something?”

Another pause. “No. Mandy’s hanging out with Lip today.”

“Fuck’s she doing that for?”

“Got me. I try not to ask.”

“Ain’t he still with Karen Jackson?”

“It’s…complicated? Kinda changes day to day.”

Mickey flipped off his dumbass client and retreated to lean against the corner of Hope’s Liquor, where he could inconspicuously survey the street to ensure nobody had decided to take any undue notice of his entrepreneurial ventures. They never did, but you couldn’t be too cautious.

“Well, tell him if he fucks with Mandy, I’ll chop off his dick and shove it up his ass.”

Ian’s laughter filtered through the shitty speaker on his phone, and Mickey scratched idly at the corner of his mouth to keep his own smile in fucking check.

“You’d have to beat her to it.”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong,” he admitted. When it came to his sister, if there was one thing he never had to worry about, it was watching her back. Mickey would have felt bad for any dickhead that crossed her, but given that they were family, his loyalties were pretty solidly decided.

Lip Gallagher, though? Shit, he’d thought she was out of her goddamn mind for fucking crushing on a gay guy, but Lip wasn’t what Mickey would call trading up.

Then again, he was sort of biased.

“So, what’s up, man?” Mickey prompted him when Ian didn’t say anything else. “You looking for a, uh… _rematch_?”

That was what they’d taken to calling their random assignations if there was even the slightest chance they might be overheard, although Mickey had to concede that it wasn’t entirely off base as far as monikers went. They weren’t a couple of fucking twinks. When they were banging one out, it wasn’t usually what Mickey would refer to as soft or gentle or whatever, that was for damn sure. There had been a number of instances over the last few months where they’d been forced to pause, listening carefully just in case all the fucking noise they made gave them away. So far, their luck had held. Thank fuck. Even after all this time, Mickey had no goddamn clue what he would say if they _did_ get caught with their pants down—literally. Probably nothing. He’d let his fists do the talking for him. Play to your strengths, right?

Mickey tried not to dwell on that potential shitshow, however. Why bother? Things were _good_ for a fucking change. Things were _great_ , albeit with a few unintended developments he purposefully didn’t read too much into. What had begun as a mutual agreement to get each other off as quickly as possible and then go their separate ways had gradually shifted into something vaguely resembling… _fun_. There was teasing foreplay now. There were euphemisms and waggled eyebrows and exasperated yet indulgent huffs. They laughed when either of them fucked up the ambiance by cracking their elbow on one of the freezing metal shelves in the refrigerator at the Kash and Grab or slipping off the bed during any of the odd occasions where the house was empty enough to use Mickey’s room. They made it a contest to see who lasted longest, and the loser had to buy lube and condoms for their next meetup.

Sometimes they talked when they were done.

Sometimes Gallagher would look at him as if he wanted to lean in and attempt that kissing shit again, which was the instant Mickey tended to remember why they _shouldn’t_ fucking talk when they were done. Ian wasn’t clingy or anything; he never demanded more of Mickey than simple fucking and happily savored whatever Mickey deigned to grant him beyond that. Not once had they so much as jokingly entertained the obviously _impossible_ notion that this could be anything other than what it was: two guys getting what they wanted, no strings or obligations attached. Even so, an indescribable compulsion that surprisingly had nothing to do with his hidden tattoo struck Mickey deep in his chest whenever Ian’s gaze softened and his eyes darted from Mickey’s to his mouth and back again. It shook him to his core every fucking time, and all he could do was get the hell out of there as fast as humanly possible to avoid making a move he’d regret or thinking too hard about what it meant.

Not that it meant anything at all. That was what happened with sex, wasn’t it? Fucking hormones made your brain fuzzy and pushed you to do stupid crap you ordinarily wouldn’t. Their normal conversations (fuck, when had Mickey turned into such a bitch that he held _full conversations_ with _Ian Gallagher_?) didn’t lead to any of that shit. It was chemical, that was all. It was nothing, not worth talking about much less considering any further. They had their arrangement, and they both liked it exactly as it had been for six months. No need to complicate that shit.

Needless to say, it made Mickey nervous as fuck when Ian stammered, “No, I was just—I mean, _yeah_.”

“Gotta fucking pick one there, Fire Crotch.”

It was quiet on the other end, and if the screen didn’t tell him that the call was still connected, Mickey would have thought Gallagher hung up on his ass. Instead, Ian waited until he got tired of pointlessly loitering on the sidewalk and made it two blocks towards the L before he picked up the thread of the conversation.

“Just seeing if you wanna sneak into the Sox game this afternoon,” he finally admitted, sounding less sure of himself than Mickey had ever heard.

Maybe flipping his phone shut wasn’t the best method of handling the situation. Mickey did it anyway, cursing under his breath.

Leave it to Gallagher to fucking ruin a good thing.

Running a hand through his hair in agitation, Mickey jogged up the steps to the L and paced around the platform rather than climb aboard the waiting train. Who the fuck did Gallagher think he was? What the fuck did he think _they_ were? Mickey had been under the impression that they were on the same fucking page, but that was apparently some bullshit he’d concocted to distract himself from how Gallagher had slowly wormed his way into the fabric of Mickey’s life until he was as ingrained as the rest of his fucking family. And that was fine when it was just banging. That was harmless. That was human instinct. Going to a goddamn _baseball game_ together? Was he serious?

“Fuck off,” Mickey grumbled aloud. It was a testament to the kind of neighborhood they lived in that nobody glanced at him twice over it.

The worst part? Hell, the worst part was that Mickey couldn’t even be as pissed off at Gallagher as he wanted—as pissed off as he _would_ have been if Gallagher had suggested this shit months ago. In fact, as his heart rate gradually returned to normal and the blood in his veins stopped surging with that toxic shot of adrenaline, his anger subsided to be replaced by a sense of embarrassment that settled heavily around him in addition to the oppressive summer humidity. The guy had asked if he wanted to hop a fence and watch a fucking game. It wasn’t like he was aiming to get married or go on a date or lay out a blanket and look for shooting stars.

Fuck buddies did shit like hang out, didn’t they? Being soulmates had nothing to do with it.

But being soulmates _did_ account for his stomach flip-flopping and his lungs acting like all the tar that routinely filled them had pooled at the bottom, making it uncomfortable to draw breath. It didn’t _hurt_ per se, yet it was enough to unequivocally inform him that his reaction had ticked off the universe. Specifically, he’d broken another one of those dumb fucking rules.

Rule number four: once you established a bond with your soulmate, consciously choosing to hurt them would deeply unsettle you.

Yeah. Mickey thought that was a load of shit too.

Of course, the scientific term was _adaptive measures for survival_. The fourth rule worked against abusive douchebags that believed they could get away with doing whatever the fuck they pleased since the victim was their soulmate, who wouldn’t want to leave for fear of feeling as shit on by the universe as Mickey had been. It wouldn’t stop the serial killer types: they got off on that kind of crap. Your run-of-the-mill asswipe? The universe had balanced the scales just right to encourage them to play nice if they decided to play at all.

Hanging up on Gallagher for suggesting they have some innocent fun that didn’t necessarily include banging rather than the alternative wasn’t really very _nice_ by the universe’s standards, apparently.

Mickey chose to ignore the implications inherent in the concept of an _established bond_. There was no strict fucking definition, right? People had bonds with their goddamn dogs, so clearly this shit didn’t have to be complex.

They were fuck buddies. _That_ was a bond.

And the powers that be considered Mickey acting like kind of a dick about it worthy of punishment. That much wasn’t tough to figure out since the last time Gallagher had been hurting, it hadn’t felt _anything_ like this.

In some ways, it had been a hell of a lot worse even though Mickey hadn’t been the one responsible. Where the universe was involved, Mickey could do something. He had some semblance of control over the situation, fucking ironic as that was. He could flip open his phone, scroll down to where he had programmed the number to the burner he definitely _hadn’t_ stolen for Ian’s birthday nearly a month ago, and just call him back. Hell, he could send a fucking text, which sounded a whole lot more appealing right about now.

Opening his front door to Ian leaning against the frame, frazzled and out of breath and begging, “I need to see you,” was a different story.

They’d been fucking around for few weeks at that point, and Mickey had frozen in place, having absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do with Gallagher’s frantic plea or tear-filled eyes. In his defense, Terry had been twenty feet away in the kitchen, so panic as his initial response was pretty fucking warranted. It faded quickly, however, when he’d _really_ taken a moment to absorb the sight that swam to the surface of his mind on occasion even now. He’d seen Gallagher horny before, but that? That was a brand of anxiety Mickey was more likely to spot on the shitheads he sold coke to, not the Gallagher sibling that smiled for no fucking reason.

And in that moment, in that fraction of a second where time nevertheless stood still, Mickey had come to the realization that it didn’t matter if Ian was merely desperate to get his rocks off or running from the fucking Feds.

He’d _needed_ Mickey.

Nobody had _ever_ needed Mickey, yet there was Ian Gallagher, appealing to him like he couldn’t imagine going to anyone else. Not his brothers and sisters. Not Mandy. Not half the people on the South Side who would be far better equipped to deal with one shattered kid. _Mickey_.

To hell with the fact that he would never have had the balls to pull that shit himself. To hell with the little voice in the back of his head that had insidiously whispered, _“What a fucking pussy.”_

Soulmate shit or no soulmate shit, Mickey was going to be there.

And he had been.

They’d banged, then Mickey had sat on the floor of the refrigerator and listened to Gallagher talk about his psychotic mother reappearing to turn their lives upside down after abandoning them two years ago. The next day, they’d banged again, and Ian told him the bitch wanted to take his baby brother and leave the rest of them to fucking rot. He’d also confessed that Fiona had ditched their asses to prove a point and was living next door with her boyfriend until Monica inevitably fucked off again.

Mickey hadn’t known what to say in response. Words had never really been his strong suit, so he’d very intelligently kept his goddamn mouth shut. He didn’t offer advice or condolences. If their positions had been reversed, he sure as fuck wouldn’t have wanted them. All he had done was listen, and somehow, it was enough: Gallagher’s smile had been unsteady at best, but it was genuine when he said goodbye and thanked Mickey just for hanging around when he was pissed and upset and all the rest.

“Whatever,” he’d retorted, forcing himself not to acknowledge what Ian’s gratitude did to him. Fuck if Mickey even knew.

So, he figured he owed it to his own confusion and preoccupation that they’d nearly been discovered the following day and, rather than taking that as the cosmic fucking hint it definitely _was_ , Mickey hadn’t let it change a damn thing. They’d been fucking fortunate as shit that they’d finished banging _before_ Towelhead burst into the store like a man on a mission. And that faggot was equally fucking fortunate that Mickey had been too busy congratulating Ian on _not_ being Frank Gallagher’s son to beat his goddamn face in when he started yelling about his wife’s _fertile window_ passing or some shit. Mickey had only just wedged himself behind a densely packed shelf like a bitch half a second before he tore open the door to grin at Ian where the latter had pretended to actually be doing his damn job.

A month earlier—a goddamn _week_ earlier—Mickey would have done the sensible thing and backed the fuck off of Gallagher for a while. Kash and Grab’s best efforts to get in his pants were consistent failures, and it wasn’t worth the trouble of waiting for him to walk in at the wrong fucking time to witness the wrong fucking moment and destroy Mickey’s tentative fucking arrangement with Ian. Not when Terry might find out and kill his ass as soon as ask whether the rumor was true in the first place.

_Fucking should’ve_ , Mickey sighed internally as he fingered the keypad on his phone without committing.

He hadn’t, however. While the universe hadn’t been punishing him since it wasn’t his fucking fault, he’d still felt Gallagher’s pain like it was his own. Mickey’s family was no fucking Brady Bunch, after all, and…Ian had _needed_ him.

But this tightness in his chest _was_ on him, and if Gallagher could man up enough to admit that he’d needed Mickey back then, well…

“Yeah?” Ian answered with a curious lilt to his voice.

“What fucking time?”

***

Their seats were shit. They were lucky to locate two beside one another on such short notice, and the row was far enough away from the action that they may as well have watched the game on television. To add insult to injury, fucking Jabba the Hutt decided to beach himself right in front of them. The guy was so goddamn huge that he couldn’t feel Mickey’s foot periodically kicking the back of his chair to make his blubber jiggle, to Ian’s seemingly endless amusement. That didn’t deter either of them from gorging themselves on the biggest tub of nachos Mickey had ever seen, though. Plus a couple sodas and three king-size Milky Ways each.

“The hell you get the money for all this shit?” Mickey asked, sending Ian the finger for having the nerve to laugh at him as he struggled to keep a string of melted cheese from running down his chin.

“Asked Kash for an advance. He owed me since I worked late last week to cover for him.”

It didn’t matter how much time passed: Mickey could never hear that jerk-off’s name without a wave of bitterness deep in his gut. Of course, the feeling was probably mutual since Mickey hadn’t exactly laid off the place in the interim. Why would he? The pedo was a fucking coward. Whether he walked out with a simple candy bar or a whole case of beer and twelve bags of chips, Mickey was never bothered about paying up for his spoils. It wasn’t the comeuppance that fuckhead deserved, but it would have to suffice until he could wrangle a spare minute to do him one better.

That shit could wait, though. It was Ian’s day off, so Mickey was determined to leave Towelhead at the store where he belonged.

“And you’re blowing it all on fucking junk food?” Mickey shook his head with a tut of exaggerated disapproval. “Damn, Gallagher.”

Shrugging, Ian shamelessly retorted, “What can I say? I have good priorities.”

“Sure you do, tough guy.”

“Fuck you, okay!” he exclaimed through his laughter. It was a near miss, but Mickey almost choked on his mouthful of chips and cheese when Gallagher punched him in the shoulder. “I already paid extra into the squirrel fund this month, and Debbie’s daycare is making a killing. We’ll be flush for the winter.”

“Yeah, till fucking Frank”—Mickey retaliated by wiping his oily fingers on Ian’s sleeve—“dips into it for booze cash.”

“Jesus, Mickey!”

“Don’t start what you can’t finish, bitch.”

This time, it was Gallagher’s turn to flip him off. “Anyway, we changed the locks again, so Frank shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Since when has _that_ ever stopped him?”

“Never, but with him living off Sheila, it should at least buy us some time.”

Mickey snorted. “Can’t fucking believe she still buys his shit. She stupid or something?”

“Knowing Frank, he’s probably got her convinced they’re soulmates,” Ian replied, grimacing in distaste.

The next part of what he said was lost on Mickey, who was too focused on swallowing the sizable lump that lodged itself in his throat to really listen. It was an off-the-cuff remark, literally fucking meaningless, yet it had him sweating a little more than he already had been in the blistering heat. They’d never mentioned that crap before— _soulmates_. The topic simply hadn’t come up. Gallagher had implied it about his mom and Frank when he’d unloaded all his shit onto Mickey at the Kash and Grab, but otherwise, they hadn’t so much as danced around the subject. His lips forming the word brought all the reasons Mickey had originally wanted to avoid being near him right to the forefront of his mind, and he squirmed uncomfortably in his seat with his eyes glued to Jabba’s saggy backside.

Frank using that soulmate shit to manipulate some old bat in the neighborhood so he wouldn’t have to get a job was pretty typical. No surprise there. Was that _really_ why Gallagher had brought it up, though? Or was it supposed to be some kind of subtle hint for Mickey that he _knew_? That he _suspected_ , at the very least?

_Jesus Christ, stop being such a fucking pussy._

How the hell could Ian know? Mickey hadn’t told him—he hadn’t told _anyone_. A quick peek at his own chest reassured him that there was nothing beneath his tank top right now because they were together, not that Ian would have been able to see it if there were. He was safe. His secret was safe. Everything was fine.

And really, so _what_ if Gallagher thought that _maybe_ they could be soulmates? He had no fucking evidence, no goddamn leg to stand on. In the event that he was dumb enough to ask, all Mickey had to do was say no. Maybe slap him around a bit for the insinuation to make it look good. Then, they’d stick with what worked for them: banging. No harm, no foul, and definitely no deeper meaning. Mickey was adamant about that.

Having had more than his fill of soulmates and fucking Frank to last awhile, he swiftly moved to change the subject as soon as Ian was done bitching about the last time his dad had dropped by. (Stealing groceries from his kids when they could barely afford to eat as it was? Fucking sack of shit.) He regretted not merely opting to watch the damn game in silence the second he opened his mouth.

“So, why’d Kash and Grab need you to cover for him? Camel jockey convention?”

_For fuck’s sake…_

One day. All he wanted was _one day_ where Ian’s pedophile boss didn’t loom over their heads like a black goddamn rain cloud. When they were in the refrigerator, they had to keep an ear out in case he showed up when he wasn’t supposed to. When they were in Mickey’s room, they had to make it snappy since Gallagher usually had to go to work shortly after, not to mention that one of Mickey’s family members could arrive on the scene at any given moment. Sure, they weren’t bumping uglies right _now_ or anything, but Towelhead was nevertheless occupying space in Mickey’s mind as though he paid rent up there. Fucking horseshit.

However, his frustration with his own big mouth was short-lived. A glance at Ian out of the corner of his eye told him that something was wrong: where he’d been eager to verbally shit all over what passed for a father around the Gallagher house a second ago, his expression suddenly shuttered, and he seemed to actively avoid meeting Mickey’s gaze.

That was all it took for that old, familiar spark of protective fury to reignite. It had lain dormant for six months, unnecessary with the conviction that Ian was keeping a safe distance from that shithead, yet it was no less intense after its hibernation.

“’Sup, Gallagher?” he prodded, narrowing his eyes when Ian ran a finger over his lips and shrugged. He _still_ didn’t look over at Mickey.

“Nothing. He didn’t tell me.”

_Oh, please._

“You and I both know you can’t lie for shit.”

There was a slight twitch at the corner of Ian’s mouth, and he quietly affirmed, “Yeah, Lip says that too.”

“Dumbass is right.” Mickey paused to screw up his face in disgust. “You tell him I said that, and I’ll rip your teeth outta your skull.”

That got a more substantial smile out of him. “Don’t worry, I won’t. His head’s already big enough.”

_No arguments there._

A couple minutes passed where neither of them said anything, pretending to watch the game even though Mickey was well aware that their minds weren’t on it. Eventually, he blew out an impatient breath and elbowed Gallagher in the side. _Hard_.

“Ow! What the fuck?!”

“ _So_?”

Ian leveled him with a fleeting glare before murmuring, “It’s complicated.”

See, shit like this was why Mickey hated fucking _talking_. It was more goddamn trouble than it was worth. If it weren’t absolutely essential to figuring out what the hell Gallagher’s own personal predator was up to this time, he’d be done with the conversation already. There had been nothing going on between those two for months, yet _now_ Ian was getting cagey about a simple question? Something was up, and Mickey was determined to get it out of him regardless of how fucking uncomfortable he could tell this conversation was going to be. Call him a sucker for punishment. 

So, turning to face him directly, he gestured for Gallagher to continue. “Fucking spit it out, you pussy.”

The crowd cheered at whatever happened on the field. Jabba jiggled harder. Gallagher’s left forefinger idly traced the nail on his right.

Then he talked, and Mickey did his _very_ best not to lose his fucking shit on the spot.

“Kash and I used to…mess around. Not lately, but a while ago. Linda found out about it and has been blackmailing Kash into having another kid. She told him he can’t do anything with me until she’s knocked up. He’s tried a few times anyway, and I’ve kept making excuses for why we can’t. But…”

One second. Two. Ten. Thirty.

“But…?” prompted Mickey more roughly than he’d intended.

A confused crease formed between Ian’s eyebrows as he examined Mickey closely, and he realized too late that maybe it would have been more tactful to at least pretend to be surprised that Gallagher had been fucking his boss. Well, hindsight or whatever.

Ian looked like he was going to dodge the question but, thinking better of it, ultimately swallowed hard and blurted out, “But now Linda’s pregnant.”

Mickey didn’t need him to go any further than that. The rest was pretty fucking self-explanatory.

Why was it that whenever Mickey thought he couldn’t possibly lower his expectations further, fucking Towelhead proved him wrong? First, the gifts. Then, the sex. Now, fucking _extortion_? Mickey had been laboring under the delusion that Mrs. Kash and Grab had more goddamn class than her fucking husband. On the contrary, they were perfectly matched for each other despite him being a closeted fag out to bang his underage employee.

“You’re telling me the bitch _knows_ and doesn’t fucking give a shit?” he demanded incredulously.

Gallagher shrugged a shoulder, listless and a bit red in the face. “She was kinda pissed when she found out.”

It said a lot that Mickey couldn’t even categorize that as a point in her favor. The fact that she was letting this crap continue—the fact that she was allowing it as a fucking _bribe_ —disqualified her from the benefit of the doubt as far as he was concerned. If she weren’t a goddamn woman…

“She beat the shit out of him?”

“I…don’t think so.”

“Oh, so she _was_ totally fucking chill with you fucking her husband.”

“I mean, she wasn’t _chill_ about it,” Ian argued before his mouth snapped shut and he turned to look in the opposite direction.

_…Fuck._

“Wait, she hit _you_?”

No answer. That was sort of an answer in itself.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Her husband’s the goddamn pedo queer, but _you’re_ th—”

Gallagher’s head whipped around so fast that it was a shock he didn’t crick his neck. His eyes were filled with misplaced rage when he hissed, “He’s not a _pedophile_ , Mickey.”

Scoffing, Mickey leaned closer to spit in his face, “The _fuck_ he’s not!”

“I was old enough to know what I was doing!”

“You think the cops would give a shit?!”

Just like that, Ian’s face went slack. It didn’t matter that it was an empty threat at best. After all, they were South Side: nobody was snitching to the fucking cops. Nevertheless, he stared at Mickey as though he didn’t recognize who the hell he was, and Mickey immediately read that as a cue to press his advantage.

“He’s your fucking _boss_ , Gallagher, and his wife dangled you in front of his face like a damn carrot. What if it were Carl, man? Or Liam? You really telling me you’d be cool with that? Seriously?”

Relief washed over him even as the whites of Ian’s eyes began to turn pink. Mickey knew he wasn’t the most articulate bastard on the planet; he could show what he was thinking far more effectively than he could speak his mind. Regardless, it was like a weight had been lifted to air all that shit after months of being asked questions he couldn’t fucking answer. Iggy wanted to know how he was so certain that Kash and Grab was a shirt-lifter. Mandy insisted he find someplace else to fuck with for Ian’s sake. Gallagher’s brother thought they’d hit a wall that he needed defending from. Jesus, it never fucking ended.

Did he want to smack himself in the face for making it sound like he gave more of a shit about the nuances of his relationship with Towelhead than Gallagher had previously believed, especially when he dragged the guy’s family into it? Fuck yeah. But this wasn’t about that. This was _catharsis_. This was strategy. One angry tirade to prove to Ian that he had to stop being a moron and see his shithead employer for what he truly was—a fucking _sicko_. An irrefutable statement that Gallagher couldn’t deny or misinterpret since he was _still_ attempting to protect that ‘mo after everything Mickey had done to strip away any reasons he might find. The inadvertent phase four of his plan, better late than never: pain administered for the sake of protection.

The universe was on his side for a change—rewarded him, even—because the only pain he felt was the sympathetic kind that he could ignore as he watched Ian lean back in his seat and stare resolutely at the field. Shouts and cheers floated around them, discordant with the tense hush that followed. Gallagher blinked a few times. Sniffed. Did that thing with his chin where it jutted out and painted his jaw in sharper definition.

But Mickey refused to feel bad. He said what he said, and that piece of trash deserved far worse judgment than what he’d oh so politely settled on. Fuck Gallagher if he was too immature to handle it.

And fuck Mickey for caring about the quality of scum in their neighborhood enough to say any of that shit out loud.

Fuck him for taking a deep breath, frowning at Ian for a moment, and hesitantly asking, “You gonna do it?”

“Do what?”

“Don’t make me say it, asswipe.”

Gallagher didn’t respond right away, folding his arms over his chest and hunching his shoulders in quiet contemplation. Mickey couldn’t help but think he looked a little more like he had before that last growth spurt, where lean muscle had replaced his lanky limbs overnight and Ian unexpectedly had to tilt his head down to meet his eyes. When he did finally speak, Mickey forced himself to swallow his own satisfaction so that Ian wouldn’t construe it as him being even more of an asshole than he already had been today.

“I don’t want to,” he muttered so quietly that Mickey had to lean towards him to hear over the crowd. “Don’t know what to say to get out of it, though.”

“Simple. Tell him to fuck off.”

Ian granted him a tiny smile that did _not_ turn his stomach upside down. “It’s not that easy, Mick. I still have to work with him, you know?”

A lot of ideas occurred to Mickey in that instant: that Ian didn’t _have_ to stay there, that he could find another job, that he could stick around but threaten to call the cops if Kash and Grab so much as looked at him funny. That he was sixteen years old, so he could tell Fiona and leave the decision in her hands if he was having such a difficult time making one.

That Lip fucking Gallagher might have a goddamn point.

Mickey didn’t voice any of them, not during the rest of the game or while they were banging at an abandoned building they walked past on their way home. Today, Ian was off. Today, Mickey wanted to put that fucking pedophile pussy out of his mind, to lock him away in the same box where he stored all the soulmate shit the universe threw at him.

Tomorrow? Tomorrow, Mickey Milkovich was going to apply for his first honest job.

***

“You steal _anything_ , you’re fired. You pick a fight, you’re fired. You threaten any of my customers _or_ employees, you’re fired. You do any drugs on the clock, you’re fired. You _bring_ any drugs or alcohol into my store, you’re fired. You show up late, you’re fired. You skip part of your shift, you’re fired,” Mrs. Towelhead rattled off like a freight train on meth.

_I jerk myself off before I get here, I’m fired. Yeah, I fucking get it, lady._

Damn, if that stick were shoved any further up her ass, she’d be a scarecrow. It wasn’t bad enough that he was standing there in this humiliating security jacket that would have him sweating his balls off for the rest of the summer, she had to ply him with this fucking spiel too? Were all bosses this asinine, or did Linda just get off on it? Considering what she’d married, the latter wouldn’t surprise him.

The same went for Gallagher, from the looks of it. Mickey was going to flip that fucking traitor the bird as soon as the bitch’s back was turned. Not that she wouldn’t catch it on camera, but so what? Little shit ought to know better than to smirk down at his trigonometry textbook as if it was all that fucking _math_ that was so damn entertaining.

“This is a trial run,” she announced for the fifteenth time since Mickey had turned in his unimpressive application. “The last thing I wanted was to hire a Milkovich, but any more shrinkage in our inventory and my boys will grow up to inherit a fruit stand instead of a store. We need _somebody_ with a working pair of balls around here.”

Mickey somehow managed not to laugh when Ian’s head shot up to aim an indignant frown at the back of Linda’s head. It was much more difficult, however, when he shrugged off the indirect insult and settled for grinning suggestively over her shoulder instead. As if Mickey needed the reminder that all his plumbing happened to be in excellent fucking condition after their brief and pleasurable detour on the way here this morning.

_Fucking Gallagher_ , he mused, gulping as the temperature inside the Kash and Grab seemed to elevate slightly. The bastard was going to get his once they were alone.

“Yeah, I got it,” he assured her halfheartedly. It was a convenience store, not the fucking Pentagon.

Linda glowered as if she was merely waiting for him to lose his limited patience, which had already started fraying the second he walked through the door, but he held his head high and tolerated the skepticism. He was a Milkovich. They were used to this kind of shit, especially when it wasn’t like he could deny that she had a pretty damn good reason not to trust him.

Not enough to stiff him on the job, though.

When Mickey had told Ian that he had an interview, or whatever passed for an interview at a shithole like this, Gallagher’s expression had been fucking priceless. He’d asked why. He’d pointed out all the stuff that Mickey would hate about it. Shit, he’d even laughed a bit at the idea of him mopping up after some asshole—like his brother—who made a goddamn mess in a nonsensical fit of rage—like his brother. But he hadn’t attempted to change Mickey’s mind, and that was the part that fascinated him the most. All those reasons not to be there, and Ian never once bothered to argue that it may not have been the best choice—that it probably wasn’t a good decision in the slightest, considering his history with both the store and its owners. It said something. Mickey liked to pretend that it said something in a language he didn’t speak, because he sure as shit didn’t want to ponder what the fuck it meant to their…whatever they had.

But it said something.

Hopefully, the universe wasn’t listening. It would undoubtedly take that shit the wrong way and slap Mickey in the ass with an even bigger rule book than he was already playing with.

Chomping at the bit as he was, Mickey still waited until Linda left to take her kids wherever the fuck they needed to go before glaring over at Ian, who was suddenly more interested in all those equations he studied day and night. The asshole knew he was being watched, too, and pretended to yawn in order to prevent himself from smirking too widely. Fucking amateur.

“Funny guy, huh?” grumbled Mickey as he came to stand opposite him at the register.

Those fucking green eyes of his peered up at him through his stupid orange eyelashes, infectious mirth twinkling in their depths and threatening to crack Mickey’s carefully irate exterior. Jesus, it was going to be tough to work with _that_ every day. Fuck the cameras and Linda’s ridiculous goddamn criteria: Mickey was already prepared for a quick break to manage some urgent fucking business. The way Ian was staring at him, he didn’t think he was alone, either.

Unfortunately, Mickey hadn’t applied for this shitty job purely to get some in the back room, so he hurriedly evaded, “Better watch yourself, Gallagher. Apparently, _I’m_ the one with the balls around here.”

“Said this morning’s bottom,” he quipped smoothly. The fucker had probably been sitting on that one for a while.

“Liking what I like don’t make me a bitch,” Mickey retorted, refusing to let him get the upper hand by rising to the bait. “ _You_ , on the other hand…”

“Fucking really, Mick?”

He feigned an innocent expression and shrugged. “Just saying. One of these days, I’ll be running the place, and you’ll be demoted to a fucking janitor.”

“I already do that stuff,” Ian observed good-naturedly, and Mickey held his hands up to indicate that he’d proven his point for him. Warm, tingling accomplishment danced along his spine with Ian’s chuckle of, “Fuck you.”

“Sure thing, but gotta wait till I’m on break or Towelhead will fire my ass.”

Ian shot him an unimpressed look but didn’t attempt to correct his verbiage like he did at the start. He’d long since learned that Mickey called shit like he saw it, and given that his— _their_ —employers were a couple of asshats who were a little too comfortable with using Ian as a weapon in their fucked up marriage, Mickey figured there were worse nicknames out there. Gallagher could deal with whatever watered-down shit he dished out.

“So,” he segued once Mickey was done flipping him off for the subtle judgment, “you really work here, huh?”

“What, you think I’m fucking around in this dump because I feel like it?”

“You still haven’t told me why.”

Mickey raised his eyebrows. “Gotta have a reason?”

Tilting his head to the side in silent concession, Gallagher still fucking persisted, “Just curious.”

So, maybe Mickey should have considered what excuse he’d use if Ian pushed him to explain himself. The kid really couldn’t take a goddamn hint sometimes. Actually, that wasn’t true: Gallagher was sharp, more so than Mickey had anticipated when he’d first realized that Ian was letting himself be taken advantage of by some middle-aged cock hound. Some of that shit went right over his head, particularly when he was too close to the center of the problem to get any fucking perspective, but otherwise he caught on quicker than Mickey would openly give him credit for.

That likely explained why he even had to fucking _ask_ why Mickey had applied for some dumbass part-time deal when he made plenty of dough working his usual routine. And hey, he wasn’t about to spill his guts all over the damn register. If Gallagher couldn’t figure out that he was the missing link that tied the chain of Mickey’s recent decisions together, then that sounded like a personal fucking problem he’d need to work through on his own. Mickey wasn’t going to be helping him on that one.

“Gonna be eighteen soon,” he lied with ease, casually grabbing a magazine and tossing it down on the counter to occupy his eyes. “Need a place to keep business on the down-low. Don’t wanna get locked up, right?”

It was quiet, the hum of the refrigeration units and the weak air conditioning all that broke the silence until Ian eventually agreed, “Right.”

When Mickey hazarded a glance, it was to see that Gallagher was seemingly absorbed in his textbook once more. And that was good. Again, why complicate shit? Everything was fine just like this. There was no reason to change up their dynamic by admitting stuff that would get Ian _thinking_. Fuck, that would end in disaster. Mickey was already skating on thin ice by letting Gallagher in as much as he had. Hanging out, and now working together? If he wasn’t careful, he’d see more of Ian Gallagher than his own family, which was a scary concept when there were more Milkoviches wandering the South Side than you could shake a fucking stick at.

If he wasn’t careful, he’d give Ian the wrong idea about what that meant, and that would be even worse.

_How_ that would be even worse increasingly escaped him as days turned into weeks and he rapidly discovered that this wasn’t such a bad gig at all. A few well-placed whispers had his customers coming to him so that he didn’t have to traipse all over the South Side to make a sale or collect a debt. Mrs. Towelhead couldn’t sniff out anything wrong with his performance _or_ their inventory, much to her husband’s obvious chagrin. Between the blow, his dad’s black-market firearm delivery service, and the Kash and Grab, it was a fairly solid possibility that they would be able to keep the heat on this winter. On his breaks, he got lucky with a redhead that actually worried about him if he showed up in a shitty mood and kept one of Mickey’s darkest secrets as though it were his own.

It was sort of weird as fuck, but they made a good team. For all of Mickey’s comments to the contrary, Gallagher was no pushover. He spoke up if a customer was being a dickhead about something they were looking for or how the store was run, although it didn’t happen often since everybody seemed to love Ian around here. On the off chance that some douchebag stopped in, though, it was impressive how professional and patient he could be when all Mickey wanted was to crack a few of those numbskulls. Then, of course, he’d roll his eyes and bash the hell out of them as soon as their asses were out the door. He called Ian a pussy. Gallagher scoffed and said he’d like to see Mickey put up with their shit instead of spectating for his own amusement. They’d laugh, check the clock, and find whatever they could to fill the hours they were both counting down to their next break. They had a good system going, and Mickey hated to admit that there were even mornings when he looked forward to a day spent at their asshole employers’ fine establishment.

Speaking of his pervy highness, Mickey had watched him like a hawk since the moment he started. That _had_ been the whole point of getting the job, after all, and it was like a boost to his weekly pay every time shithead seemed to be on the brink of spontaneous combustion if Mickey didn’t get lost. Which he never fucking did. As much as Ian wanted to believe otherwise (or simply ignore the situation, honestly), Mickey could tell that the second he was out of sight, that fucker would attempt to undo all his freelance work. Maybe that wouldn’t have bothered him a few months back, when he was content with the knowledge that Gallagher wouldn’t play into that shit and he didn’t feel the need to get involved beyond that anymore. After hanging out with the guy, working with him, seeing the unease on his face to even mention that his boss might want something from him that _he_ didn’t want to put out? Mickey wasn’t _that_ fucking heartless.

It was just a matter of time, though. Mickey couldn’t be at Ian’s side twenty-four seven. Now that he was around, Kash and Grab didn’t typically share their shift, but there were exceptions. There were always exceptions.

As such, it was really no surprise whatsoever that Mickey finally snapped about three weeks into his less than lucrative yet far more than carnally satisfying employment.

The offense was minor compared to the rest of the shit that he’d witnessed. Fuck, the guy didn’t even put his hands on Ian. If he had, Mickey would have been in the back of a cop car on his way to a murder arraignment. Instead, it was a little thing that represented a whole lot more.

Letting Mickey go on break a few minutes early.

Telling Ian that he could join him once he’d finished restocking the oral hygiene section.

Waiting until Mickey stepped out the front door to have a smoke.

Not paying enough attention to realize that he was still watching through the glass.

Ian’s shoulders were stiff as he used a pocketknife to cut through the tape on a box of floss. Kash and Grab stood on the other side of the counter, his palms pressed to the surface and his mouth moving quickly. Whatever he was saying, Gallagher wasn’t interested, and Mickey scowled as that fucking pedophile’s caution dissolved into desperation when he received no answer. It was all he could do not to go right back inside as his goddamn lips wrapped around Ian’s name in a way Mickey was glad he couldn’t fucking hear, brimming with fury at how wrong it would sound coming from _him_.

That was when Gallagher finally glanced up and met his gaze with an exasperated frown. He spoke, Queer Eye’s face fell into an expression of abject despair, and then Ian was practically running for the storage room as though somebody had announced that they were handing out free White Castle back there.

Mickey was proud of him. _Really_ proud of him.

But all his years of working for Terry had taught him how to fucking read people, and Towelhead was practically an open book as it was. Yeah, he was hurt. The idiot looked like somebody had crumpled him up, tossed him in a trash can, then kicked his dog for good measure.

He didn’t seem _defeated_. He didn’t seem like someone who’d just been broken up with.

Immediately, all the hatred that had been festering beneath the surface ever since Mickey had first spotted him kissing Gallagher erupted. Who the fuck was he to even _need_ a breakup? Who the fuck was he to feel an ounce of pain at obviously being told to take a flying fucking leap? Who the fuck was he to stare at the door Ian had disappeared through with an air of devastation, sure, but also _heartbreak_?

Ian Gallagher was sixteen years old. He had his whole life ahead of him and hadn’t fucked it up by marrying someone he didn’t love, having kids he plainly didn’t want, or pretending to be something he fucking wasn’t. He was _better_ than this asshole that had no right to look at anybody his age let alone _expect_ anything from them.

Mickey didn’t think about it. He didn’t consider the fact that the cameras in the store were functioning perfectly or that Linda had backed him into a fucking corner with all her damn rules. All that mattered was vengeance and justice.

Vengeance against pedophiles.

Justice for Ian.

“W-What are you doing?!” Kash and Grab yelped once he was up against the wall with Mickey holding Gallagher’s discarded knife to his throat. The pussy didn’t even attempt to fight, his hands trembling as he held them in the air.

“Way I see it, you got two options,” Mickey said so calmly that he would have been real fucking pleased with himself if he weren’t ready to blow a gasket. “Option one: I chop off your dick and serve it as the in-flight meal on your trip home to Baghdad—“

“I’m from _Evanston_ …”

“Option _two_ : I kick your ass and call the fucking cops.”

“I didn’t do anythi—“

Mickey’s glare was enough to shut him the fuck up, and his eyes widened in sudden recognition that his secret wasn’t so secret anymore. The scent of his terror made Mickey sneer.

“Clock’s ticking, dick-breath. Better choose before I choose for you.”

Towelhead swallowed hard and shook his head, pleading, “Just let me go, Mickey.”

_As if._

“Tick tock, tick tock…” Mickey increased the pressure against his neck.

“Okay, okay! I’ll go!”

“Don’t remember giving you a door number three.”

“I swear, just… _please_!”

It wasn’t his pathetic begging that made up Mickey’s mind for him. Left to his own devices, he would have been hard pressed not to at least get in a few good punches and maybe shove his foot up the guy’s ass since he was such a fan of taking it.

But a door opened. Closed. And he could _feel_ Ian watching him so intensely that the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

Soulmate or not, soldier-in-training or not, Mickey simply couldn’t fucking do it. There was no arguing that the douchebag deserved every bit of abuse that Mickey desperately wanted to put him through, not to mention a very long stint behind bars, but… Would Gallagher even appreciate that? Would he want to get dragged into the middle?

Would he want Mickey around anymore if he beat the guy within an inch of his life? Nobody in their neighborhood was a stranger to violence, for fuck’s sake, and Ian was no exception. This was different, though. It was personal. It was something they needed to talk about first, and Mickey fucking _hated_ talking.

That little voice in the back of his head seemed to be doing a lot of it, though. The one that sounded less like Terry and more like Ian with every passing day.

_Jesus Christ, what the fuck is happening to me?_

Towelhead’s shock when Mickey released him and tossed the knife back onto the counter was palpable, and he immediately saved face by shoving his finger in the faggot’s face and hissing, “You better fucking hope I don’t see your ass again. You hear me?”

Nodding. Manic nodding. Then that fucktard was out the door so fast that he was practically a blur.

Mickey didn’t turn around right away, waiting for Ian to get pissed off at him like he had when Mickey had suggested that he was sleeping with a pedophile. Waiting for the universe to punish him. Just…waiting.

It was the sound of the front door locking and the sign being switched to _closed_ that eventually forced his hand, and he took a deep breath as he spun around to find Gallagher watching him through slightly narrowed eyes. His expression was inscrutable, which set him on edge since the moron tended to wear his heart on his fucking sleeve. Shit, had Mickey fucked up _that_ badly?

No, of course he hadn’t. That saggy ball sack needed to be put in his place— _should_ have been put in his place months ago. This was _right_. This was _justice_ , even if it only served to tick Gallagher off. He’d just have to fucking get over it.

And boy, did he.

Mickey had barely a moment’s notice before Ian was right up in his face, and he instinctively pressed a hand against his chest to hold him at bay so that he couldn’t lean in further and blow this all to hell. Kissing? He’d walked in to catch Mickey threatening to skin their goddamn boss alive, and Ian wanted to _kiss_ him? What the hell was this, some stupid fucking movie?

They weren’t a couple of fags. They weren’t fucking _queers_. No matter how hard his stomach squirmed in anticipation and desire, Mickey wasn’t about to pretend that he was.

Fortunately, and perhaps a little disquietingly, Ian read him like he always did and didn’t force the issue or attempt to make this shit any weirder than it already was. He didn’t fight what Mickey wouldn’t say.

And Mickey didn’t fight when his deceptively delicate fingers slowly trailed upwards to grasp the collar of his security jacket. He didn’t resist the gentle tug as Ian walked them back towards the storage room. He didn’t tear his eyes away from those endless green depths that swallowed his very soul so that he couldn’t be sure where he ended and Ian began.

If it took until long after they were on the clock again for Mickey to realize that this was the first time they’d faced each other from start to finish and that he’d let Ian tenderly kiss his shoulder more than once? It was only because he was high on victory and Gallagher was so damn good at expressing the gratitude he had damn well earned. There was nothing inherently _wrong_ with Mickey gripping his recently buzzed hair and drawing his head even closer in wordless encouragement. It wouldn’t hurt as long as it was a one-time thing.

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As much as I wanted something stronger for Kash, we know from the altercation with Ned in s3 that Ian would only let that go on for so long. Sigh.


	5. Visibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! 
> 
> PLEASE NOTE: The second section of this chapter depicts homophobia and violence. The violence is not graphically described. There is also a brief, non-descriptive mention of Monica's actions at Thanksgiving.

They had…something. Something that had grown and matured since Mickey tossed Kash and Grab out on his ass a year ago. Something that Mickey wouldn’t give a name to because doing so would mean admitting shit he _definitely_ wasn’t about to admit, like defeat in his perpetual war with the universe over this soulmate crap or the words his dad would murder him for thinking let alone saying.

But they still _had_ something.

Mickey couldn’t put his finger on when exactly shit had changed. Maybe it was a gradual decline into fucking madness; maybe a goddamn anvil had fallen out of the sky and hit him in the head overnight somewhere along the way. Whichever it was, his relationship with Ian was so different that he could hardly recognize what they had now compared with how they’d approached each other a year and a half ago.

The fuck-and-go that this shitshow had been at the start was long gone. Mickey didn’t remember the last time they’d met up for a quickie and then simply walked away without talking or some shit. There were plenty of instances where they didn’t bang at all. Sneaking into movies and baseball games, meandering through alleys around the neighborhood so they wouldn’t be spotted, Ian training in the makeshift ROTC obstacle course they’d built at the same abandoned building they’d used for booty calls on a thousand occasions while Mickey watched the sweat soak through his shirt and emphasize the growing definition of his muscles… A lot of it ended in banging one out, but a lot of it didn’t. Even when they were on the job, not every break was an invitation to a hurried fuck anymore. If they had the cash to spare, they’d grab a sandwich or whatever from a food truck down the street; if they didn’t, they’d take turns holding the camera up just enough so that Linda wouldn’t see them sneaking donuts out of the front case. Ian wasn’t merely hair, eyes, and a dick available to him at his leisure. Although Mickey would never tell him and needlessly inflate that asshole’s orange head, he grudgingly considered them far more than the fuck buddies he’d worked overtime to remain. They were… They were _friends_ , or at least something real damn close. For whatever reason, Mickey was actually okay with that.

For whatever reason, he genuinely couldn’t imagine walking it back with Ian like he’d repeatedly told himself they should, either.

He’d attempted it once, a couple hours after he’d threatened Linda’s cheating, pedophile husband. (All things considered, she was hardly any better, but Gallagher wanted him to let it go—as if _that_ was ever going to fucking happen. Mickey was pretty good at hiding shit when he put his mind to it, though, so it hadn’t come up again.) Ian had called Lip so that his brother could put that big-ass brain of his to use overwriting the portions of the security tapes that would have gotten Mickey fired on the spot. That, of course, required him to watch them, which automatically required him to _comment_ on them because he was Lip fucking Gallagher and couldn’t keep his mouth shut if you glued his lips together.

“Damn, Mickey,” he’d murmured, visibly impressed. “I think you made him shit his pants.”

Shrugging, Mickey had folded his arms across his chest and grumbled, “Fucking pervert. Serves him right.”

The mingled relief and appreciation on Lip’s face combined with the ghostly sensation of Ian’s mouth against his collarbone had settled in his stomach like a rock, and he’d hastily excused himself to chain smoke it all away in front of the building. That hadn’t been the goddamn purpose of getting the job. Not remotely. He didn’t fucking care whether Lip was glad that a middle-aged ‘mo wouldn’t be macking on his kid brother anymore. He didn’t fucking _care_ if Ian took it as some kind of sign that Mickey _felt_ anything for him besides a little lust for what he had in his pants. He didn’t fucking _care_ about what a goddamn miracle it was that nobody else would be vying for Ian’s attention anymore, regardless of whether he chose to give it.

Except he _did_ care—a hell of a lot more than he was comfortable with, too—and he had no fucking clue how he was supposed to handle that.

In hindsight, he should have quit. Called it a day. Declared his mission accomplished. Gone back to normal after six months of ostensibly having lost his fucking mind. Whatever. Even a year later, however, the notion left a bad taste in his mouth. If he had, it would have meant giving up his job, which had become tolerable if not always enjoyable and supplemented his personal cash flow nicely. He also would have had to go underground for a while since Gallagher still had a tendency of showing up when Mickey least expected him to. Fuck that shit.

There were other reasons, as well. They rolled through his brain on a constant loop whenever an errant thought about what a dumbass he was slipped past the walls he’d built around himself. Sure, this wasn’t where he’d wanted to end up. None of it fit the mold Mickey had relied on at the beginning, and the longer they left it in the oven, the more likely it became that they wouldn’t be able to keep the flames a secret forever. But all the dreams about Terry beating the shit out of him, beating the shit out of Ian, killing them both and dumping their bodies in Lake Michigan—all of it seemed so far away when that voice in his head reminded him what he’d lose by telling Gallagher to fuck off.

Without Ian, there would be no one on the planet to smile at him first thing in the morning, as if anybody in their neighborhood could possibly be that cheerful _or_ glad to see Mickey’s face at any time of day. No one would gaze at him when they figured he wasn’t looking and clumsily hide their goofy, lovesick fucking grin as soon as he turned around to flip them off. He wouldn’t have someone who called him on his shit and didn’t stand down just because he threatened to castrate them. He wouldn’t have someone to listen to him bitch about the errands Terry had him running or the stupid fucking crap his siblings and cousins got up to, sympathetic and perhaps a bit amused. He wouldn’t have somebody to sit under the high school bleachers with after Mickey waited an hour or so for school to end, somebody to hang out with when he was bored, somebody who didn’t judge him for the shit he was involved in when Ian wasn’t around.

Somebody who _accepted_ him for who he was and where he came from and what he had to be.

Somebody who _cared_ about him.

Somebody he… _cared_ about too.

Ian never needed to find out, and Mickey loathed admitting it even to himself, but how could he not? It was that little piece of _something_ between them, sure, but it was also a pretty big fucking piece of _something_ that was purely Ian Gallagher. Like standing at the edge of a cliff and leaning over, pondering the fall despite knowing you wouldn’t jump, there was _something_ in Ian that Mickey couldn’t ignore. Couldn’t avoid. Couldn’t _resist_. The more he let Mickey in to discover all the shit he hid from the world beneath that dumbass smile of his, the more foreign his previous disinterest seemed. Hell, he knew Ian better than he knew himself most days, and he didn’t think the universe had anything to do with how _natural_ it felt to be privy to dimensions of Gallagher that other people didn’t fully get to witness. To really _see_ him.

His cheesy sense of humor. The street smarts that outweighed his book smarts, though the latter weren’t anywhere near as sparse as he had clearly come to believe growing up in Lip’s shadow. A love for his siblings—even for his shithead mother—that was so all-encompassing that Mickey couldn’t fathom ever experiencing anything like it. His sense of responsibility and the ambition to _be_ somebody, not just one of Frank Gallagher’s numerous neglected progenies. The way he wanted to support his family and was so patient with all the younger Gallaghers. How easy it was for him to forgive Fiona every time she forgot to remember him or stand up for Lip even when the guy was busy fucking up his life left and right. The fact that his biological father was living in a nice house and could probably buy him whatever the fuck he wanted, yet he chose to stay in the goddamn ghetto because _this_ was his home.

His short temper where Frank was concerned. His lack of understanding with regard to Mickey’s hesitation to take so much as one step further in their _whatever it was_ for fear of Terry figuring out what they were up to. His stubborn devotion to that military shit and obnoxious disappointment over not meeting the criteria for officer-level suicide. The blinders he wore against the reality of his relationship with Towelhead. His discomfiting habit of telling Mickey the shit he should keep to himself and _not_ telling his family the shit that he _really_ needed to. That naïveté that buoyed his affections as if Mickey could promise him anything.

Even with the bad stuff added into the equation, Ian was… He was so goddamn _good_. He’d spent months making sandwiches for a bedridden Linda and keeping her company after her deadbeat husband followed through on his promise that Mickey would never see his ass again. Gallagher returned to the store whispering about how fucking awkward it was every single time, but he never ignored her calls. He never told her to shove it like Micky would have. Instead, he’d exhibited a wealth of fucking patience that Mickey couldn’t even begin to comprehend. And that wasn’t even accounting for all the shit he did to keep his family afloat: dedicating almost every cent he earned to their squirrel fund, humoring Debbie by sticking around for some dumb sleepover so she’d feel like she had more friends, teaching Carl how to grip a hunting knife to prevent him from fucking decapitating himself by accident. When Lip and that Jackson bitch finally called it quits after one _seriously_ fucked up baby-mama horror story, Ian was there for him. When Frank lost Liam on a stupid bet after he couldn’t put his money where his mouth was, Ian was there to help get him back. When Mandy ended up pregnant under the worst set of circumstances, Ian threw a goddamn bake sale (and, simultaneously, a sale to get people baked) to fund her abortion even though Terry had attempted to kick the crap out of him for allegedly knocking her up. The guy was practically a goddamn saint. Flawed as hell, yeah, but a saint nevertheless.

On occasion, Gallagher being so _good_ pissed him the fuck off. While he had a feeling that Ian’s whole army schtick reeked more of escapism than actual patriotism, Mickey didn’t doubt for a second that his goal was still as noble as the dumb fucking commercials brainwashed him into believing: that he could accomplish something that helped other people and become a hero in the process. There was a ton of shit that he could do to get out of the slums they’d grown up in, most of which didn’t involve getting his ass killed, yet he stuck to that like glue no matter how many smart-ass remarks Mickey made about it. Then there was the fact that he’d sooner drown than let any of his siblings know that he was treading on thin ice, whether it was with work or school or whatever the fuck else he had going on. Goddamn martyr.

That shit was easily overlooked, though. What Mickey found more difficult to stomach was that he hadn’t been wrong about Ian being too good for Towelhead—about him being _better_ than all that sickening chaos even without the general pedo vibes coloring the picture fucking _wrong_.

Because he was _definitely_ too good for Mickey.

The idiot didn’t seem to realize it. Whether they were pissed off at each other for something stupid or sharing a smoke in the alley beside the Kash and Grab, Ian looked at him like he had rainbows coming out of his ass. Those eyes of his would get all big and soft and sweet; he’d smile at whatever Mickey said, no matter how trivial or just plain moronic. The grumpier he pretended to be with all that attention, the more affectionate Ian became. It was fucking embarrassing sometimes, Jesus Christ.

It was also pretty fucking addictive once he got past the reflexive discomfort. Mickey never felt that he fully deserved it, but if Gallagher wanted to dish that shit out, then he wasn’t going to object _too_ loudly.

As long as he was smart about it and didn’t pull that crap in front of anybody else, which Ian had been clever enough to manage thus far.

That was the thing: while Mickey may have reached a point where he was willing to flip off the universe and keep Ian around simply because he didn’t mind the company, not because they were destined to be together or whatever the fuck, there were still certain practical boundaries that needed to be observed. There were lines that he couldn’t fucking cross regardless of how badly Mickey despised internally confessing that he wanted to.

They didn’t bang at Ian’s house, nor did they hang out there for any of his loudmouth family members to see. They didn’t touch in public. They didn’t do that dating shit or whatever constituted _romance_ on the South Side. Obviously, that was the logical approach. If they could be seen, then Terry could find out, so they minimized their chances of anybody noticing them and made damn sure that no one would be able to tell that they were more than coworkers, possibly casual acquaintances. All of it would be made up for behind closed doors and away from prying eyes anyway. Well, except the romance. No fucking thank you.

Only one of their boundaries extended to the time they spent around each other in private: they didn’t kiss. _Ever_. Not when they couldn’t be seen, and not when they could.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, fucking strange as that was to even begin to contemplate. It wasn’t that Mickey didn’t imagine what it would feel like to have Ian’s lips pressed to his every fucking time they caressed his shoulder or his back instead. It wasn’t down to any kind of irrational fear that somehow kissing Gallagher would summon a fucking audience.

Or maybe it was. After all, the universe was the most judgmental spectator out there, and it was fully prepared for him to submit to one moment of weakness. There was even a goddamn rule for it.

Rule number five: kissing your soulmate under the right conditions would make your tattoo visible to them whether you were together or not.

No more hiding. No more secrets. Pure and devastating vulnerability.

_Hell no._

If he was being honest, Mickey’s refusal to take that leap was overcautious to an extent. The conditions required to initiate rule number five biting you in the ass were fairly specific: you had to _love_ your soulmate, and you had to _want_ them to know. _Actual_ love. _Actual_ desire for them to be let in on your secret with the universe.

No, Mickey didn’t fucking _love_ Ian Gallagher, and he certainly didn’t want him to fucking know about the card he’d been playing so close to his chest that it was literally stamped on him anytime Ian wasn’t around. So, by all accounts, he had nothing to worry about. They could’ve made out every fucking day with no consequences.

But Mickey was a goddamn pussy and couldn’t take the risk. The universe had screwed him over all too often, and it would be just like that motherfucker to argue that there was some latent bullshit he was attempting to ignore that nevertheless met its stupid criteria.

This was a game, and he wasn’t going to lose. Fuck the universe. Fuck him for stepping waist-deep into Gallagher’s personal shitstorm and playing himself in the process by getting familiar enough to actually _like_ the guy. Fuck him for being so addicted to Ian Gallagher that he hadn’t run before the unthinkable happened.

_Seeing_ Ian had turned into _caring_ about Ian.

_Caring_ about Ian had resulted in _lowering his guard_ around Ian.

And _lowering his guard_ meant not recognizing that they were operating on borrowed time.

***

Mickey hadn’t been to work in a week.

_“Faggot!”_

There were four missed calls, six unread text messages, and three unopened voicemails on his burner phone. He didn’t have to check to know who they were from.

_“You fucking cocksucker!”_

The concrete was littered with cigarette butts that had rapidly accumulated over the last two hours as he puffed his way through half a carton. His first cheap bottle of liquor was a shattered smattering of glass at the other end of the building. His second was already burning a hole in his throat.

_“No son of mine”—_

His left eye was swollen, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been a few days ago.

_“is gonna be a pole”—_

The ribs on his right side still ached anytime he drew breath.

_“smoking”—_

There was a raw cut running the length of the bruise on his left cheek that would sting if he smiled. Good thing he didn’t.

_“queer!”_

Mickey indifferently swirled the amber liquid around the bottle. He felt numb. He was distantly pleased to feel numb.

_“I could fucking kill you!”_

They’d been caught. Of course, they had. Anybody could have predicted that. Nothing in Mickey’s life stayed _so_ good for _so_ long without something happening to fuck it all up. That was how shit worked. That was how the universe functioned in spite of how vehemently it had attempted to convince him otherwise over the last couple years.

_“Get my Ruger. I said get my fucking Ruger, Iggy!”_

In the back of his mind, he wondered who the hell had seen them—and _where_ —before running to tell Terry. It couldn’t have been while they were at the Kash and Grab: they were careful about locking every door and going where the cameras wouldn’t record them, even if Mickey had a sneaking suspicion Linda was aware of exactly what they were doing and opted to turn the other cheek rather than broach that subject with the most reliable employees she was likely to find. Besides, his dad hadn’t warned him off the place or forced him to quit his job. If that were the answer, he probably would have burned the joint to the ground on principle.

_“You fucking listen to me.”_

The rundown van in the Gallaghers’ backyard? That alley behind the Alibi? Under the bleachers? The dugouts they’d gone to that one time? Right here in the place that had become their spot? It didn’t make a difference. The outcome was the same.

_“You’re done with this faggotty shit.”_

Thankfully, Mandy hadn’t been there when it all went down. What would she have done if she discovered that her best friend—her _ex-boyfriend_ now that she was sleeping with Lip—had been fooling around with her brother and never said a fucking word? That was all it would look like to her. That sure as fuck was all it looked like to Terry, and when he didn’t intentionally muffle his senses, Mickey was relieved. Sex was sex. His dad had been in prison, and all kinds of shit happened in there. Carnal shit. Shit that didn’t mean anything.

_“Now, here’s what you’re gonna fucking do.”_

Terry couldn’t figure out how much _more_ than sex this was. He couldn’t dig up what Mickey did that had nothing to do with getting his rocks off. The talking, laughing, joking, teasing, chasing, playing, listening, learning— _feeling_? That had to stay buried.

_“You’re gonna go find that Gallagher queer.”_

If he could convince himself that Mickey was simply experimenting, that there was no emotion underlying his actions, everything would be fine. Mickey wouldn’t be…wouldn’t be _gay_. He wouldn’t be a disgrace or a disappointment. He wouldn’t be all the shit his dad had called him before inflicting a punishment far worse than any beating.

_“Then, you’re gonna give him the fag-bashing every goddamn homo deserves.”_

There was one sent text on his burner phone. Half an hour ago.

_“If you don’t”—_

The alcohol went down hard. Not as hard as he had when he’d crashed to earth or their living room floor.

_“I will shove this”—a pointed shake of the Ruger—“up your ass and fucking shoot you myself.”_

“Mickey?”

His voice broke through the silence that only existed outside Mickey’s head, echoing off the walls of the abandoned building that used to be their haven. They’d fucked here, yeah. They’d also hung out. They’d passed cigarettes back and forth. They’d brought cases of beer and talked about nothing. They’d hauled junk from the neighborhood up to the roof and built a place for soldier training and target practice.

Ian came here to cry in the bitter cold the day after his mom tried to off herself last Thanksgiving. He’d wanted to be alone, and he was at first. Then Mickey had found him after he bailed on the shitshow of a holiday his own family was throwing. Booze didn’t replace a turkey, and the house had been so empty once everyone went down to the Alibi to watch football that nobody noticed if he was gone for a while. They’d sat there without saying much until the temperature dropped too low to bear, and even then, they’d wordlessly scooted a bit closer to share some warmth and escape the real world for a few more minutes. Mickey remembered hesitantly reaching up to put a hand on the back of Ian’s neck. Nothing fancy, just a firm hold. A voiceless reassurance.

Mickey came here when he was angry at everything, including Ian. That used to happen a lot, specifically in the aftermath of Towelhead’s departure. He simply couldn’t rationalize why he was doing exactly what he’d resolutely refused to for months on end and would perch up in the derelict scaffolding, taking pot shots at a threadbare stuffed animal he’d found in a box of Mandy’s old things. He’d pretend that it was the universe, that it was his father, that it was all the unspoken rules that had been foisted upon him until it felt like his life was running along a set of rails that would escort him straight to Hell. Mickey came here when everything seemed concurrently wrong and right and he had trouble recognizing the smirking face and sappy gaze that stared at his tattoo in the mirror every morning. Sometimes the solitude would last, but not usually. More often than not, Ian would arrive on the scene eventually, hunting him down when he didn’t show up for work or didn’t answer his phone or Mandy let slip that he was in a shitty mood.

Ian and Mickey came here to be _Ian and Mickey_ , to keep the rest of the universe at bay, and to simply _be_.

And for all that Mickey had a hard time pinning down what the fuck had happened to him and who he had become since meeting Ian Gallagher, this was where he was determined to murder that person before they could destroy him further.

_Fitting._

“ _Jesus_ , Mickey,” Ian breathed once he was close enough to notice the remnants of his dad’s outburst where they stood out against his pale skin. “What the hell happened?”

This wasn’t the time to savor the softness of his fingers on Mickey’s face as they gently lifted his chin to get a better look, and Mickey instinctively shoved Ian— _Gallagher_ —a few feet away from him. He had to do this. He couldn’t let himself fall into the hole he’d dug all on his own while Gallagher had watched with a smile on his face and no goddamn idea what it meant to be a Milkovich.

He had to break the cycle.

He had to break some rules.

He had to break _them_.

“Fuck’s up with you?” asked Gallagher cautiously, not approaching but sure as hell not backing off anywhere near enough.

Mickey didn’t answer— _couldn’t_ answer. If he opened his mouth, he wouldn’t be able to regulate what came out. He didn’t ordinarily have a problem with that when the last thing he wanted to do was _think_ and he had no control over his fucking life, but with his luck, his words would betray him just like everything else.

Except Gallagher.

_Shut the fuck up._

Running his thumbnail over the corner of his lower lip, Mickey stared straight past Gallagher’s arm and attempted to block out the sight of his muscles repeatedly tensing as though he was struggling not to reach for him again. Like they did whenever Gallagher wrapped them around his shoulders or his waist to draw him closer.

“Mick?”

Like they did when Gallagher playfully threw a can of beans at his head for calling him a fucking girl while they were at work.

“Mic— _oof_!”

The air audibly rushed out of his lungs as he doubled over, an arm that used to lightly shove Mickey when he wouldn’t immediately share a cigarette curling around his torso where Mickey’s fist slammed into him. And they were accustomed to violence, yeah. They were familiar with the sounds of both prey and predator, had heard them since they were too young to understand the implications. But this wasn’t the same as a random thug on the street or one of the clients that believed they could stiff him and get away with it. Gallagher was on the receiving end this time, so Mickey didn’t need the universe to punish him with a flare of unease that turned his stomach: that was nothing when he already felt like he might just die.

He didn’t, though. He was too much of a coward. Afraid of his father and afraid to die and afraid to drag Gallagher down with him.

So, Mickey grabbed his shoulder to hold him still and punched him again like the fucking pussy he was.

When Gallagher fell to his knees, Mickey felt the impact in his gut. Every cough as he tried and failed to catch his breath was a stutter in Mickey’s chest. And the betrayal Mickey had suffered at the hands of the universe? It was in the green eyes that gawked up at him, wide and hurt and uncomprehending and so unbearably naïve.

If only he could blame the stupid fucking powers that be, but they had nothing to do with any of it. Not this time.

“What the _fuck_ , Mickey?” Gallagher wheezed without attempting to rise.

“He knows.”

It slipped out before he could stop himself, and he paced back and forth so that he wouldn’t have to watch the severity of the situation seep into Gallagher’s consciousness—which it _did_. Gradually. Painstakingly slow. But it did. There was no sparing him the knowledge of how badly they’d fucked up, just like there was no saving either of them from what was going to happen next. What _had_ to happen next.

Because Mickey was a coward.

At the edge of his vision, Gallagher incredulously shook his head. “How?”

“Fuck should I know?” he scoffed.

Lip was lauded as the brains of the Gallagher clan, but his brother was no slouch in that department, especially when it came to dealing with people. Geometry wasn’t his thing; trigonometry and chemistry fucked him up good. There was no one better equipped to deal with an irate customer or a lost kid, though. Gallagher simply _understood_ people when his own emotions weren’t directly involved, the latter prompting him to bury his common sense beneath a mountain of doubt and denial. A part of Mickey wished that that ignorance, willful or otherwise, extended to this bullshit. Then again, that would mean having to explain, and there was no way in hell he could find the words to do it. All he had were his fists, and Gallagher had apparently read those as fluently as he was reading Mickey right now.

“So, that’s it? We’re over?”

Cursing under his breath, Mickey turned away. He couldn’t plug his fucking ears against the devastation in Gallagher’s voice, however.

“Your dad beats the shit out of you. No conversation— _nothing_? You’re just gonna get in a good fag-bash and act like I don’t mean anything to you?”

_Jesus fucking Christ._

He didn’t get it. Of course, he didn’t fucking get it. When _his_ family found out that he was a queer, they didn’t give a shit. It was simply more evidence that the Gallaghers and the Milkoviches were polar fucking opposites. The real world didn’t work the way it did in their house.

And Gallagher was seventeen years old. The fuck did he know about the real world anyway?

“If I don’t,” Mickey ground out through clenched teeth, “he will kill me himself.”

“We can figure something out.”

_Here we go._

As if sensing his skepticism, Gallagher desperately rambled, “There’s gotta be something. You and me, we can… We can ask Lip. Maybe he’ll have an idea. Y-You can leave, come stay with u—”

The blow to his temple was pretty fucking low, but Mickey didn’t care anymore. There was only bitterness and regret flowing through his veins, though who exactly it was directed towards, he couldn’t fucking say. Terry for making him do this. Himself for going along with it. Gallagher for not just shutting up and letting it happen. For suggesting that they tell anybody else about whatever the fuck it was that existed between them. For acting like there was any solution to this that didn’t involve allowing the world to destroy them as it had been waiting to do since the start. For providing him with that tiny, worthless speck of hope that there would ever be a way out of what Mickey was truly destined for, soulmate shit be damned.

There was no hope. There was no escape.

Mickey was fucked for life. It was about time they both grew up and accepted that.

“What fucking world do you live in?” he spat alongside another punch, this one aimed at Gallagher’s jaw. He wobbled dangerously, still on his knees, and didn’t even attempt to block Mickey’s fist from catching him on the cheek—then on his ear—as the vitriol spilled forth from his lips, unbidden yet irrevocable. “What do you think, we’re boyfriend and girlfriend here? You’re nothing but a warm mouth to me!”

The universe gripped his stomach tightly, so he punched Gallagher in his. It gagged him with invisible fingers around his throat, so he hit Gallagher there, too. His stomach. His face. Everywhere he could reach. Everywhere that he’d ever gently caressed in his idiocy. Again and again and again until Mickey didn’t know if the red he was seeing was Gallagher’s hair or the blood pouring out of his nose or a figment of his own imagination like the safety he’d been dumb enough to believe they’d had.

He didn’t stop because of the pain that enveloped him, not a punishment from the soulmate police but one of his own design. His arms didn’t eventually drop to his sides because of how sore his knuckles were. Hell, he didn’t call it quits because Gallagher was a wreck where he lay on the ground, coughing and sputtering and fucking crying if the clear tracks cutting through the smears of gore on his cheeks were indicative. Ultimately, three words barely choked out around the blood in his mouth stilled Mickey more effectively than any of the rest.

“Don’t do this.”

_Too late._

It had been too late the day Mickey had woken up with a tattoo that read _Ian Gallagher_ on his chest.

Grabbing the bottle of liquor he’d been working on, Mickey relished how much it hurt his hands and throat to chug the rest and threw it against the wall with enough force to smash the glass.

Then, without so much as glancing in Gallagher’s direction, Mickey carelessly announced, “Done is done,” and walked the fuck away.

***

There were plenty of structural problems with the Milkovich house. The roof leaked, the floorboards were hanging on by a fucking thread, and the gaps between a few of the windows and their frames were so wide that they might as well just leave them open. Drunken rampages and wild parties had left holes in the walls, exposing wires and pipes that probably should have been replaced a few decades ago so they didn’t all die of lead poisoning. Over the years, so many of them had come and gone that they’d put up random fucking walls and then taken them down again to create rooms they needed and get rid of them when they outlived their usefulness. The kitchen was too damn small; the refrigerator and stove would likely crap out on them soon. They had more furniture than they knew what to do with, which meant a lot of it ended up randomly thrown around while the rest waited to rot out in the yard.

And the walls were far too fucking thin.

“No, we haven’t really talked much lately,” Mandy was saying in the next room over. “Why?”

There was silence as whoever was on the phone apparently responded, and Mickey attempted to ignore the noise by reloading his airsoft gun and firing another shot at the pyramid of empty beer cans stacked on his dresser. Another miss. Another dent in the drywall.

“Are you fucking kidding?”

Fire. Miss. Dent.

“He say who it was?”

Fire. Miss. Dent.

“I can try.”

Fire. Miss. Dent. Reload.

“I fucking swear, if it was that secret boyfriend of his, I’ll hunt him down myself and sell the guy’s dick on Craigslist.”

Mickey reached blindly for another beer off the floor, popping the tab and chugging half of it in one go. It wasn’t as potent as the booze that had been steadily leaking out of his pores since that morning, but it kept him just this side of sober, so it would have to do. He’d briefly considered hitting Iggy up for some blow until he remembered that his brother didn’t give freebies to anybody, not even Mickey, who wasn’t exactly swimming in cash after spending enough at Hope’s Liquor to pay for the owner’s kid to go to private school. Iggy was kind of an asshole like that.

So was Mandy. She didn’t even knock before barging into his room and grimacing at the sight of him slumped on his bed in nothing but his boxers. Rude as shit, that was what it was. And when the hell had she gotten off the phone?

“Jesus, what the fuck?!” he slurred angrily.

“What the fuck’s right,” she shot back, visibly disgusted. “Why does it smell like a fucking bar in here?”

Mickey flipped her off and took a pointed gulp. Talk about a loaded fucking question.

Fortunately for him, Mandy wasn’t in the mood to dig into his problems. Then again, she was _never_ in the mood, and that went both ways. They respected each other’s boundaries and only stepped in when asked. That was the deal, and it had worked out pretty well for them so far.

_Unfortunately_ for him, Mandy _was_ in the mood to dig into somebody _else’s_ problems.

“Whatever. Was Ian at work today?”

Shrugging, Mickey grumbled, “How the fuck should I know?”

“Uh, you work there too, dickface.”

“Nope.” He belched loudly, crumpled the empty can, and threw it at the stack he’d been shooting for. That missed too. “Quit.”

“Since when?”

“Since none of your fucking business. Fuck you wanna know for, anyway?”

She sighed impatiently, folding her arms and leaning up against the doorframe. “Lip said somebody kicked his ass pretty bad. Ian won’t tell him what happened.”

There wasn’t any judgment or suspicion in her expression, and Mickey breathed a sigh of relief that she apparently hadn’t made the connection between his bruised knuckles and Gallagher’s busted face. Thank fuck for that: he was too goddamn hammered to come up with a good excuse.

The universe only allowed him so much leeway, however. Whether it was the deceptive reprieve, the alcohol, or a combination of the two, Mickey couldn’t refrain from practically dislocating his jaw to shove his foot inside.

“He okay?”

_Fuck. Seriously?_

“Why do _you_ care?” asked Mandy, raising an eyebrow. Still not suspicious—just curious.

“Don’t,” he murmured while pretending to reload.

“If _okay_ is icing his face and ignoring everybody, then yeah. He’s _great_ , Mick,” she sardonically retorted after a moment’s hesitation. Backing out of his room, she added, “Gonna see if I can get him to talk. Don’t drown on your own puke.”

“Skank.”

“Douchebag.”

Mandy closed the door behind her, and Mickey didn’t care. Her footsteps echoed through the house as she left, and Mickey didn’t care. She went to find Ian, to be there for him when he was undoubtedly hurting, and Mickey didn’t care.

The whole thing was a joke. Gallagher was no snitch. He wouldn’t tell her shit, not when he wouldn’t even spill the beans to his brother.

And wasn’t that fucking hysterical? After everything Mickey had done that morning, he didn’t doubt for a second that Gallagher would have his back regardless. He didn’t have to question whether the portions of his secret that hadn’t made it to his dad’s ears yet were still secure. Not that that made a damn bit of difference.

Mickey fired ten more times, missing every shot, and he didn’t care.

He downed two more beers in as many minutes, and he didn’t care.

He ran a hand over his chest where a black mark would never be invisible to him again, and he _didn’t care_.

Because it was better this way.

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This would be a great place to remind you that this story will, in fact, have a happy ending. :) Thank you for reading, for all of your encouragement and feedback, and for being here every week. See you next Saturday!


	6. Symmetry

For two months, Mickey did a piss-poor job of ignoring Gallagher’s attempts to get ahold of him. It was one hell of an achievement: the guy wouldn’t fucking _quit_.

It had started with texts and, when Mickey didn’t open them, progressed to calls. Never voicemails, thank fucking God. He had an easier time standing his ground if he couldn’t hear Gallagher speak or picture what his face looked like. His red-rimmed, sorrowful eyes. His lower lip sticking out a little when he bit down on the inside and tried to keep it together. That stupid chin and the defiance that would accompany it. The intoxicating and poisonous certainty that they could make this work just because he wanted it to. Shit, it wasn’t bad enough that Gallagher hadn’t given him more than a couple of days before the barrage began. Those mental images were fucking cruel.

That was all he had, however, because he made damn sure that he didn’t go anywhere Gallagher might find him. Not the Kash and Grab. Not the high school. Not the abandoned building that would never again be their spot. When unanswered phone calls turned into showing up at the house under the pretense of seeing Mandy, Mickey had even hustled his ass out the kitchen door to avoid doing something monumentally moronic, like _talking_. Terry had let the gay shit go; he’d even congratulated Mickey on a beating well administered after catching a glimpse of Gallagher at the Alibi. As far as he was concerned, Mickey was cured of whatever insanity he had been suffering from, and he wasn’t about to test whether that fatherly approval would withstand the two of them being in the same room together.

Mickey’s willpower sure couldn’t. That was what had gotten him into this mess to begin with.

But he was doing okay. He’d crushed his burner with a hammer and thrown out the tiny shards of glass and plastic that sort of resembled what was left of his heart if you squinted hard enough. He’d kept himself busy with gun runs and drug deals. He’d even started hanging out with fucking _Iggy_ again. It was hard on the brain cells, but the shocking lack of judgment about… _that shit_ wasn’t unwelcome. In fact, that was what made resorting to old habits a bit more palatable. They went to work. They got drunk and high in front of the television. They found girls to fuck that wouldn’t expect them to stick around for pillow talk or some shit. Iggy never mentioned what had happened that fateful fucking morning, and neither did Mickey. 

So, yeah. For two months, he made a conscious effort to merge back onto the rails that his dad had built for him. Mickey wouldn’t call it _normal_ or anything, but it was close. Some stuff had changed and couldn’t regress to how it used to be—the pervasive ache in his chest that kept him from looking in the mirror, the niggling desire to take North Wallace on his way to the L, the insistent reminder that something was _missing_ in his life and had left a gaping hole that he’d never be able to fill. Inescapable guilt. Boundless grief.

The loneliness was the fucking worst. It wasn’t that Mickey _needed_ somebody around all the goddamn time. That shit would annoy the hell out of him far more than it would sate his unease. He never invited bitches to his place for a reason: if they got clingy, they’d be out on their ass in a hot fucking minute. Find what he wanted and beat a hasty retreat—that was the system. No attachments. No strings. No obligations. Nothing remotely similar to what the last couple years had amounted to. Mickey was Mickey, and he didn’t need or want somebody rolling up on his business at all fucking hours. But… Well, there were occasions when he walked down the sidewalk and remembered that it was sort of pleasant to have another person to talk to. A moment would pass where he’d randomly reach for the burner that no longer existed and remember too late that there was nobody thinking about him, or at least nobody he could acknowledge. Mickey never had any of that shit before, and he didn’t fucking _need_ it now or whatever. That didn’t stop him from missing it a little, though.

Of course, that wasn’t why he _only_ lasted two months. If it were, he would’ve brained _himself_ instead of letting his dad do it. That was some pussy shit. Fuck that. Mickey wasn’t such a coward that he couldn’t own up to the bouts of stupidity that plagued him here and there, so he had no qualms admitting that he _only_ lasted two months because he was the king of making terrible fucking choices.

Apparently, he wasn’t alone there.

He had to hand it to Gallagher: the asshole really _didn’t_ give up so easy. Whether it was that fucking soldier spirit, his characteristic lack of self-preservation, or a dangerous combination of the two, he may as well have written a manual outlining which of Mickey’s buttons to press in order to make him explode.

Texts and calls could be ignored.

Visits? Avoidable.

Some high-class geriatric in a bespoke suit leaning against the side of his fancy-ass black convertible while Gallagher made eyes at him was what sent Mickey into fucking space.

No, it hadn’t been a _good_ idea to come to the Kash and Grab. What the fuck ever. He hadn’t been planning on going inside or anything. Mickey had simply decided to wander by and confirm that Gallagher hadn’t made a dumbass fucking move like run off to the army or start wearing a dress or something equally goddamn nuts. After all the time and energy Mickey had invested in his personal shit, he had more right than most to verify that his efforts hadn’t gone to Hell with everything else. It was a one-sided business transaction. Purely professional. Nothing social whatsoever. He’d silently sworn on the ride over that Gallagher wouldn’t discover that he was even there. This was the equivalent of a drive-by, only without the firearms. Or the car.

If Gallagher had been sitting behind the counter, hunched over a magazine or a textbook, Mickey would’ve hopped the train home immediately. If he’d been banging someone new in the refrigerator, he _wouldn’t_ have gotten pissed off about it. Gallagher was a big boy who could do whatever the fuck he wanted. Mickey wasn’t about to get involved in his crap. That had bitten him in the ass, kicked him in the gonads, and punched him in the fucking face already.

This, however, was a whole other level of fucked up. Mickey could have predicted the normal shit. He didn’t want to see Gallagher pining over him like a girl or whatever, nor would the guy stoop that low. _Some_ semblance of normality? Not a bad thing, undesirable as witnessing it from afar would be.

The _last_ thing he’d anticipated was Gallagher getting dropped off by a trust fund baby who wasn’t a member of his gigantic fucking family. Shit, this prick could buy half their neighborhood and still have cash left over to do some much-needed remodeling. He probably lived on Lake Shore Drive and could explain what a goddamn hedge fund was. Plus, there was no way this shithead wasn’t old enough to be fucking _Towelhead’s_ father.

_The hell you doing, Gallagher?_ Mickey mused, hating that the answer was pretty fucking obvious.

It was barely eight in the morning. It was a Saturday, yet Gallagher had a backpack slung over his shoulder. They were talking as though they hadn’t merely _happened_ across each other.

Oh, right. And Homosaurus Rex had his goddamn hand on Ian’s waist and two fingers beneath the hem of his shirt.

A fucking seventeen-year-old.

_Mickey’s_ fucking seventeen-year-old.

_He’s not yours_ , he wordlessly rebuked. _He’s not yours. He’s not fucking yours, you faggot._

The reminder didn’t ease the pain in his jaw where his teeth were grinding together so roughly that he was distantly impressed none of them broke. It didn’t soothe his palms when his fingernails dug in, seeking old-man blood and coming up short.

It sure as fuck didn’t keep his mind and the universe from whispering, _He could have been._

Where the hell did Ian dredge up these douchebags anyway? First, Kash and Grab—now grandpa? Was he for real with this shit? There had to be an invisible sign over his head that attracted fucking low-lifes to his underage ass. Maybe he walked the streets of Chicago with a piece of cardboard declaring that he’d fuck for free in bold red Sharpie. That or Frank finally ran out of his dirty disability money and was pimping his kids out these days. It said more about Frank than Mickey that it wouldn’t have surprised him in the slightest, though he was mildly taken aback at the notion that he wouldn’t have started with Fiona or Debbie. Sick, yeah, but that was fucking Frank Gallagher for you.

There was no chance this was his doing, much as Mickey would have loved to pin it on that goddamn degenerate. With his face and physique, Ian didn’t _need_ any fucking help finding a sugar daddy, not from a lifelong con who couldn’t scam his own way into some rich pervert’s pants.

Expensive, neatly pressed, unstained pants.

With a matching blazer.

Was his tan fake, or did this fucktard have a beach house in Miami?

_Does he love him?_

Mickey could have beat his head against the L support that had practically been his second home a couple years ago. _No_ , this fucker didn’t _love_ Ian. And _Ian_ didn’t fucking love _him_. That was impossible. The guy had been at Mickey’s house last week, pretending to be studying with Mandy when Mickey was positive that he was simply waiting for him to leave his bedroom. Had he found somebody new _and_ fallen for them in a few days? Hell no. Gallagher was a moron with no fucking taste in men— _clearly_ —but he wasn’t _that_ dumb.

Just dumb enough to hop in bed with yet another shirt-lifter. At least he’d picked a rich dude this time instead of a dead-end clerk with a wife as mean as a snake.

Somehow, that didn’t make Mickey feel any better.

_He could have been._

Either that annoying sixth sense Ian had for sniffing out his moods struck again or Mickey’s discomfort betrayed him by radiating across the street, because Gallagher’s gaze was drawn right to him. One second, he was laughing at whatever that sexagenarian fucktruck was saying; the next, his eyes were sliding over his shoulder to meet Mickey’s like Ian was aware that he’d been standing there. Or like the universe was back to fucking with him again. Really, it amounted to the same damn thing, though Ian’s smile dimming made the latter far more likely.

Originally, his goal had been to sneak a quick peek and then leave. That was already far more than ample reason for Terry to shove a rifle down his throat and blow his spinal cord apart one vertebra at a time if he hadn’t just gotten popped for possession and assault a week ago. (Good fucking riddance, too.) But Mickey couldn’t imagine walking away from this. For one thing, his feet were practically glued to the pavement while his eyes drank in the sight of Ian openly gazing at him, sending girly fucking words like _gorgeous_ and _beautiful_ flying around his head.

For another, the fudge-packer chose that moment to slide his hand around to the small of Ian’s back and pull him in for a kiss.

Mickey saw red.

Ian only saw Mickey.

Because he didn’t close his eyes. He didn’t look away for a fraction of a second. Everything else went exactly as Mickey figured it should: Ian took a step forward, leaned into it, and raised his hand to the side of the cradle-robber’s face. But his eyes were on Mickey. Not angry. Not remorseful. Not even hurt.

Watching.

Waiting.

_He could have been._

Then it occurred to him: was this how Mickey was going to spend the rest of his life? Was this how Mickey _wanted_ to spend the rest of his life?

He’d never thought much about it. So many aspects of his existence were somebody else’s decision to make, so there was never a whole lot of point in trying. But Ian locking lips with this nameless, faceless sack of shit on the street in broad daylight as Mickey gaped at them like a fucking idiot shook something loose. The concept that perhaps _wanting_ wasn’t necessarily bad hit him with all the force of a big rig. Did he _want_ to be yards away forever, always avoiding, always hiding? Did he _want_ to wish that Ian’s fingers were gently gliding along _his_ throat rather than someone else’s? Did he want to swallow the heartache every single fucking day because he was too frightened of what would happen if his dad caught wind of the fact that Mickey was…

That he was…

That Mikhailo Milkovich was… _fucking gay_?

Did he want to spend the rest of his life pretending that he hadn’t fallen in love with Ian Gallagher as soon as he’d opened his front door to be told that he was _needed_?

No. He didn’t.

_Mickey_ wanted to be the one Ian smiled at when he finally severed that kiss. _Mickey_ wanted to be the one to put it on his face, to give him a fucking _reason_ to be happy. _Mickey_ wanted to be the one to give his hips a squeeze before letting go with a satisfied grin. _Mickey_ wanted to be the one who got to watch him saunter inside the Kash and Grab with renewed confidence and a spring in his step that he hadn’t seen since their first booty call in the very same place.

_Mickey_ wanted to be _Ian’s_.

Mickey wanted _Ian_ to be _his_.

_He could be._

It was time to get to work.

***

If Mickey went back in time and told his younger self that he would voluntarily track down Lip Gallagher for help someday, the dumb little shit would have told him to get the fuck out of here. That was certainly what his brain kept repeating as he stomped up to the fence around Gallagher’s house and shoved open the gate the moment Lip stepped out onto the porch for a smoke. It wasn’t October yet, so the weather hadn’t gotten cold enough to keep everyone holed up inside, and Mickey was privately grateful for that. Irritating as it was, waiting across the street for his quarry to appear didn’t cut his legs out from under him. Ringing the goddamn doorbell and playing Russian roulette with which of Ian’s siblings would answer—or worse, his fucking parents depending on the week—might have deterred him from trying altogether. That wasn’t to say that Mickey was scared of them or some shit. It would just be inconvenient, was all.

And this was already going to fucking hurt as it was.

“Sergeant Slaughter,” Lip greeted him with a mock salute. It was always disquieting how the fucker never seemed as surprised or disappointed to see Mickey as pretty much everyone else in the neighborhood.

“Yo,” Mickey replied with a nod. “Need a favor.”

While his presence might not have shocked Gallagher, _that_ got him, and his eyebrows flew skyward. “Wow. Cutting out the bullshit, huh?”

Well, he was fucking working on it.

“Whatever, man. Can you find somebody from their license plate?”

“You mean, can I commit a felony by hacking into the Chicago police database?”

That was fucking laughable. Lip might have been a damn genius since they were in diapers, but that didn’t mean he had it in him to get popped for grown-up shit. Some petty theft and trespassing? Mickey could see that. Dicking around with serious offenses right under the nose of more powerful authorities than some college prick with a weird-ass fetish for fucking his grad students? He didn’t have the balls.

Scoffing at the mental image of Lip Gallagher in an orange jumpsuit, Mickey quirked an eyebrow and clarified, “Thought you had that cop friend.”

“Yeah, see, that’s the thing.” He paused to take a hit off his cigarette. “If I ask Tony, he’s gonna need a good reason. I’m guessing that if it’s for _you_ , then whatever you’re looking for probably isn’t really up his alley?”

“Fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“ _Legal_ , Mickey. He won’t go for it if it isn’t on the up-and-up.”

“Jesus Christ, he’s a fucking Boy Scout?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

That figured. It used to be that greasing a few palms or some harmless kidnapping had the pigs turning a blind eye to just about anything. What the hell was the world coming to when Mickey couldn’t even get a fucking _name_ without jumping through hoops?

But he was putting the cart before the horse. Lip had been the one to address _Mickey_ about the camel jockey; Ian couldn’t keep a secret from him if he duct-taped his own mouth closed. So, it stood to reason that perhaps they wouldn’t have to fabricate some dumb excuse to get Dudley Do-Right to play ball anyway.

Mickey dug around in his pocket and pulled out his phone, accessing the pictures he had taken at the Kash and Grab barely an hour ago. No, it wasn’t fucking creepy that he had more photos of Mister Moneybags than he did his own family or fucking porn. It wasn’t _stalking_ or shit like that. Fucking please. Mickey was a goddamn professional, and every professional in his illicit branch of the economy understood that surveillance was the most vital element of the job. Even Ian had rambled on and on about it in one of his thousand military rants: if you didn’t go into an operation with all the relevant details, you’d be dead in the water. Or just dead. See? Fucking professional.

“Look, you seen this guy?” Mickey demanded as he shoved his cell in Lip’s face with an impatient huff.

If he was hoping that Gallagher would identify him as some notorious serial killer Mickey hadn’t heard of since he was too busy dodging Ian and his own fucking feelings, he was sorely mistaken. The effort wasn’t entirely wasted, however. Lip’s eyebrows furrowed in confused recognition, and he shrugged a shoulder as though he was watching a fucking puppy video instead of getting a front-row view of the guy that was diddling his kid brother.

“That’s Ned.”

_Fuck, even his goddamn name is pretentious as shit._

“Ned,” echoed Mickey. When Lip merely nodded, clearly missing the urgency here, he gestured for him to get the fuck on with it.

“Uh, yeah? Ned Lishman. He’s Jimmy’s dad.”

“ _Jimmy_. As in Fiona’s lying piece of shit boyfriend, _Jimmy_?”

“Yeah. Different name, same asshole.”

The anger that had been simmering at the edges of his consciousness flared into a roaring, incendiary rage. When Ian told him about the infamous Jimmy-Steve, Mickey had been less than impressed, to say the least. Why his sister kept his ass around was a goddamn mystery. He didn’t level with her about who he was; he ran off to fucking Beanerville or whatever and came back _married_. The shithead couldn’t take _no_ for an answer, and she’d thrown it at him so often that maybe he’d forgotten fucking English while he was gone. Now his goddamn pedophile of a father randomly appeared on the scene and was apparently determined to keep it in the fucking family? Jesus, daytime soap operas had nothing on this shit, but at least they were fictional. This… This was _real life_. Fiona could fuck hers up as much as she wanted. If she was too stupid to get rid of Jimmy before she found out he had a house full of kids or AIDS or something, that was her business. If she wanted to keep a conman in her bed, far be it from Mickey to judge her too harshly. The Milkovich household had seen and done far worse, far weirder shit.

But Ian was _his_ , or he was damn well going to be. Jimmy was her fucking problem—Ned was Mickey’s.

How fucking hysterical: the apple really didn’t fall far from the tree.

There were a lot of tactful ways to approach the situation. There were infinite combinations of truths and lies that he could feed Lip in order to get what he wanted—what he _needed_ if he was going to purposely play right into Ian’s fucking hands _and_ teach Daddy Warbucks to stick with toys better suited for his own very advanced age group.

“Yeah, well, Jimmy’s dad is Ian’s new boyfriend.”

Fuck tact.

Any other time, Mickey would have been proud of himself. There couldn’t be many people who actually stumped Lip Gallagher, yet he’d fucking managed it. They could probably hear the guy’s jaw hit the concrete in Indianapolis.

“Dude, what the fuck?!” Lip sputtered after a moment of stunned silence.

_Welcome to my fucking life, man._

“Yeah. Tell me about it.”

Shaking his head, Lip threw his half-smoked cigarette into a plastic dish on the deck and paced manically along the sidewalk. Mickey had to admit that he sort of felt bad for him. In their neighborhood, they had enough shit to deal with and too many questions they couldn’t answer. How would they pay the bills? Would there be money left for food when they were done? Should they sacrifice the water for filling the pantry? Did knocking at the front door herald a thug, a cop, or a fucking Jehovah’s Witness—or even a fucked up combo of all three? Were they ever going to catch a goddamn break? Today, Mickey had that one covered: _no_ , they fucking _weren’t_. Because for all the shit on their plates, he and Lip had yet another concern pop out of the fucking woodwork—the last one either of them had any desire to deal with.

Great. He was _actually_ comparing himself to Lip fucking Gallagher. If he’d known Ian was going to be a package deal, he wouldn’t have…

Never mind. Yes, he would.

Lip was apparently as wrapped around his brother’s finger as Mickey, because he didn’t automatically jump to kicking Ian’s ass like Mickey would have if it were his own flesh and blood dragging him into this mess. Oddly enough, he _did_ narrow his eyes at _Mickey_ when he finally ran out of steam and stopped imitating a wind-up monkey.

“I don’t get it.”

_Join the fucking club._

“What, that your brother’s got a thing for pruney sacks?” retorted Mickey. “‘Cause we’ve fucking been here before, man.”

“ _No_ , I just…thought he was still hung up on… _someone else_ , y’know?” said Lip haltingly, his steady gaze fixed on Mickey.

Not subtle. _Definitely_ not fucking subtle, and Mickey instinctively glanced up and down the street as if Terry might materialize straight from the pen despite Gallagher not throwing names around. Yeah, he fucking _knew_. Even if he didn’t have a brain in his head, any doubts he harbored would have vanished immediately when Ian pulled that shit with the kiss and practically _dared_ him to fucking do something about it rather than stand there like a pussy. If it wouldn’t have been more likely to land him in prison right beside his old man than accomplish anything to speak of, Mickey might have been tempted to go through with it, but there were too many fucking witnesses. What would be the point of getting his ass locked up when Ian would be on the opposite side of the glass for however long they’d give some South Side shit stain for assaulting an upstanding, contributing member of society?

Yeah, Mickey was fucked for life, but he wasn’t _that_ fucked. He had a reason to actively avoid it now.

He had a reason to hope for something _better_.

Starting with putting one Gordon Gekko in his place.

“You got an address?” Mickey asked, steering them back on track. Lip didn’t attempt to stop him, nor did he appear to mind all that much. Something told Mickey he was as eager to discuss Ian’s love life as Mickey was for Terry to be released on parole again. That didn’t keep him from being an annoying little shit, though.

“What’re you gonna do to him?”

“Buy him one of those hipster coffees. The fuck you _think_ I’m gonna do to him?”

Lip quirked an eyebrow. “Got anything to do with grabbing your brothers?”

Grimacing, Mickey replied, “Fuck no. I ain’t looking to have the cops called on my ass.”

“So, no fag-bashing? Damn, you’re a changed man.”

Flipping him off was the kindest response Mickey could muster, and the dickhead smirked with all the confidence of someone who knew he was of too much use to get his teeth kicked in.

_Far_ too much use.

“I don’t know where Ned lives, but, uh…” He trailed off with a glance towards the house. When he turned back to Mickey, there was a hard edge to his gaze that hadn’t been there before. “But I know someone who does.”

***

“Why did you wanna come _here_?”

“Already told you, it’s none of your fucking business.”

“You brought me along, so it _is_ my business.”

“Only brought you because you wouldn’t talk if we didn’t.”

“Yeah, and now I’m _involved_.”

Fuck kids. Especially kids with the last name _Gallagher_.

Mickey dug his fingers into the bridge of his nose, not feeling a headache so much as a full-on migraine forming if Debbie didn’t close her trap soon. There hadn’t been an unnecessary peep out of the backseat while she was giving him directions, but once they pulled up outside the biggest goddamn McMansion Mickey had ever seen in person, she wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

_Damn, Ian, you sure know how to fucking pick ‘em._

All right, so _maybe_ the headache wasn’t _entirely_ Debbie’s fault.

“Fuck you gotta know for, anyway?” he grumbled, sounding louder than he’d intended in the sudden absence of the battered old engine under Iggy’s hood. Her expression was supremely unimpressed when he glanced in the mirror.

“You wanted me to take you to Fiona’s boyfriend’s house in the middle of the night without giving me any reason. If you’re going to kill someone, I should probably know before the cops show up.”

“Why the hell you think I’m here to murder somebody?!”

“I mean, it _is_ you,” Lip offered from the passenger seat. The shithead should have focused on sucking down his cancer sticks.

Turning sideways to glare at the two jokers, Mickey challenged, “Name _one_ person I’ve killed, smart ass.”

“Uh, wasn’t there that guy down on Cermac who disappeared? Drug bust, ratted Terry out, then turned up floating in Lake Michigan a couple weeks later?

“You got fucking proof?”

“No.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I didn’t fucking kill that snitch.”

“A kid at school said he saw you burying a body in some teacher’s front yard,” Debbie interjected. Mickey wasn’t sure which was more unsettling: that she sounded so damn unperturbed by that or the fact that she actually believed that shit.

“Okay, _one_ : that was Iggy and Colin. You’d make a shit witness, Wilma. And _two_ , they were getting rid of it for the guy who _did_ do the killing.”

“Then why are we here if you aren’t going to kill anybody?”

…Okay. She was good. There was no doubt that this kid was a fucking Gallagher: like both of her older brothers, she knew exactly which goddamn spots to poke in order to set him off. With the possibility of murder effectively tabled, she figured he’d be more willing to disclose their _real_ reason for being here. To prove his character or whatever the fuck she was hoping for.

Well, the joke was on her. Mickey wasn’t going to give up the ghost just because she thought her dumb game would outsmart him. He was a Milkovich. Milkoviches saw through con jobs like most guys jerked off—quick, simple, and uncomplicated.

Nope. It was his own damn choice. The sooner he gave her what she wanted, the sooner he could unload both Gallaghers and go about his fucking business. If he didn’t do it soon, somebody _might_ end up dead after all.

So, with a somewhat exaggerated roll of his eyes, Mickey finally admitted, “We’re just paying his asshole dad a visit to remind him not to get his dick wet around stupid fucking kids. That cool with you?”

“Jesus Christ, Mickey. Seriously?” groaned Lip, though he hardly needed to worry about his little sister’s delicate sensibilities. The pint-sized Gallagher didn’t look anywhere near as scarred for life as Mickey had been at the Kash and Grab fourteen hours ago.

Not that he was counting.

“ _Jimmy’s dad_ is a pedophile?” she squeaked.

“Yep.”

“ _No_ , Debs,” Lip hurried to contradict him. “He’s… He’s, uh…”

Mickey raised his eyebrows curiously. This would be good.

Or it would have been if the guy hadn’t pussied out at the last second and muttered, “Okay, yeah, he kinda is.”

Much to Mickey’s relief (and probably Lip’s), Debbie forewent asking how they could be so sure and skipped straight to, “Does Jimmy know?”

“Probably not.”

“What about Fiona?”

“What kind of dumb fucking question is that?” sneered Mickey.

“Why don’t we just call the police?”

“You really think they’re gonna lock up some loaded prick just ‘cause we said he’s a kid-fucker? We’re wasting fucking time here. Look, _you_ ”—he pointed over his shoulder at Debbie—“are gonna wait in the fucking car. We’ll go take care of this shit and be right back. Got it?”

“No way. I wanna help!” she argued immediately. Because she was a Gallagher. Of _course_ , she had to fucking argue. Luckily, there was an older and infinitely more stubborn Gallagher on Mickey’s side this time.

“No, Debs,” Lip began, but she wasn’t done yet. She didn’t even give them an opportunity to fight back.

“If I stay here, I might get bored and call Fiona.”

Well, that certainly fucking settled it. If Debbie told Fiona, then Fiona would probably get pissed off and tell Jimmy, and if _Ian_ was around to _hear_ her get pissed off and tell Jimmy…

_Not an option._

Mickey glanced at Lip, found that he was equally stymied, and shrugged. She wanted to get her ass thrown in juvie if they got caught? That was her own fucking business.

“You know how to spell _pedo queer_?” he asked, tossing a can of red spray paint into her lap.

“I’m almost _fourteen_ —”

“That might not be such a good idea,” Lip interrupted before she could get her panties in a bunch. “Cops would call it a hate crime.”

Snorting, Mickey waved him off. “Bitch, ain’t nobody calling the cops.”

“How do you know?” Debbie piped up again.

“Because he’s gonna be too worried about what his old lady’ll do to his ass when she gets a load of his ride.”

“His…ride?”

Damn right.

The overpriced metal wagon was backed into the driveway, as unassuming and innocent as any car that pretended it hadn’t been a party to the shit that it had. That it hadn’t been parked outside wherever Ian picked up Richie Rich, Sr., or carried him to wherever they’d fucked, or taken him to work the next day as if there wasn’t anything fucking wrong with that.

But that was whatever. Mickey was going to make damn sure that it never had the chance to pull that shit again and that the whole goddamn neighborhood couldn’t question what kind of dumpster fire they lived near.

Even if it did end up being a bit…anticlimactic.

That wasn’t to say that he didn’t fucking enjoy the shit out of smashing the windows while Lip stood on the roof and took a sledgehammer to the windshield. It was satisfying as fuck to dump an entire three-pound bag of sugar into the gas tank to the tune of the expensive-ass alarm blaring, and he didn’t think he was imagining the grin on Gallagher’s face as he slashed tire after tire after tire after tire. Debbie had a surprising amount of goddamn talent in the graffiti department: it was almost artistic, the penmanship she put into tagging _pedophile_ along the length of the driver’s side and _queer_ on the other. The whole thing was a blur, though, quick and neat so that they could high-tail it out of there in a car with fake plates to avoid landing themselves on anybody’s shit list. There wasn’t time to really _savor_ the victory, not even when Mickey decided to say fuck it and pulled an AK-47 out of the trunk to put a few holes above Debbie’s handiwork for emphasis. And punctuation. Always important.

Mickey told himself that that would come later, when he was home in his bed after dropping his accomplices off and waiting around for a few minutes in the hopes of catching sight of Ian in the upstairs window. He hadn’t, and he didn’t feel any more victorious alone in the dark than he had standing in Thurston Howell’s fucking driveway.

Not until he woke up to someone hammering on the front door like they were trying to break in.

_There_ was the satisfaction he’d been waiting for.

“Cool your fucking tits!” Mickey yelled as he emerged from his room in nothing but his boxers. Nobody was home, and if he played his cards right, he wouldn’t be dressed much longer anyway. So, really, why bother with bullshit?

It was the same rationale that preserved his smug smirk in spite of—or, more appropriately, _because of_ —the venomous glare that Ian directed at him from the front stoop. Word apparently traveled fast between the lap of luxury and the fucking ghetto.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” demanded Ian, advancing on Mickey until they were both inside and slamming the door shut behind him.

Oh, this _was_ going to be fun.

“Could ask you the same question, Gallagher,” he shot back without any heat. His lackadaisical attitude seemed to merely send Ian even further over the edge, though Mickey couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t look _quite_ as angry as he’d been expecting. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Maybe Gallagher was putting on the best act a kid who didn’t know how to lie for shit could muster.

_That one. Definitely that one._

“First, you beat the crap out of me and tell me to fuck off. Now, you’re gonna get mad when I’m seeing someone else? Are you fucking kidding me?”

The hilarity of the phrase _seeing someone else_ had him miming the wank job Ian’s excuse comprised before the words were done spewing out of his big mouth. “Please, you picked that geriatric viagroid to piss me off.”

“What, you thought I was just _waiting_ for you to show up and see him?”

“Ain’t like I wouldn’t find out even if I _didn’t_ see his tongue down your fucking throat. Small neighborhood, dumbass.”

“Not like you care, anyway. Done is done,” Ian parroted his own words back at him, and oh shit, there were the fucking tears in his eyes again. “Right?”

That was Mickey’s cue to come up with a real crusher, something clever and shitty in equal measures. In that instant, however, he drew a big fucking blank. Yeah, he’d meant it when he said it: done was done. Then he’d returned to a life without Ian Gallagher dogging his every step, nagging him and smiling at him and pushing his buttons and raising him up. Did it make him a terrible person for wanting it back after all that effort to literally knock it into Ian’s head that it wasn’t going to happen? Perhaps. But hey, Mickey never said he was the good guy in this story. Fuck the good guys. They finished last.

They definitely didn’t latch onto Ian’s neck and drag him down to where Mickey’s lips were anxiously waiting for him. Not without consent or permission or whatever the fuck else Mickey interpreted from Gallagher showing up on his doorstep.

And it was… _everything_. It was an apology and a declaration and an acknowledgement and a prayer all rolled into one, and Ian’s automatic reciprocation was all the answer he could ever hope for. It didn’t matter that they were standing in the middle of the living room where anybody could waltz through the front door and see them. Mickey wasn’t concerned with the shadow of Terry’s threats and disgust hanging in the air like noxious gas. The slight irritation from the zipper of Ian’s coat rubbing his bare skin raw as they attempted to get closer and closer and closer was nothing at all.

This was what he wanted.

This was how he wanted things between them to be for the rest of their lives.

_Okay, calm down._

He was getting too sappy for his own fucking good, but the point nevertheless remained. Breaking apart and coming up for air didn’t break the connection between them; they stared at one another, green to blue and back, as though the rest of the world didn’t exist. As though Ian’s stupid, naïve fucking _hope_ had burrowed into Mickey’s chest and made a nest for itself there. Gallagher could tell, too. His eyes were staring straight at it.

Well, kind of.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ian breathed, the words bearing a much different flavor this time. The emotions that flitted across his visage were complicated as fuck and harder to read than Mickey would have liked; he awkwardly cleared his throat to draw Ian’s gaze back up from where it had been fixed on the tattoo that he could now fucking see, courtesy of the universe.

Because Mickey loved him. He _wanted_ him to know. Of course, he fucking wanted him to know.

Still, he wouldn’t have been the happiest camper if _he’d_ been staggering around in the dark all this time, so he tugged on the drawstring of Ian’s hood and cautiously muttered, “You pissed at me?”

Gallagher didn’t answer right away, but there was a smile playing around the edges of his mouth when he shoved Mickey towards his bedroom.

“Later.”

_Damn, Gallagher._

Yeah, Mickey deserved that. But at least it meant that they were going to have _time_ —that there would, in fact, _be_ a later. He could handle Ian giving him shit if he was _there_.

And to be honest, it wasn’t like he stayed immune from ridicule for long, _also_ courtesy of the universe.

Rule number six: when you and your soulmate _chose_ each other, with full transparency and understanding of the bond you shared, your name would appear on _their_ chest.

Today was a day for firsts, not least of which being Mickey’s realization that he kind of had a thing for ink on the guy he loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one rule left, you guys! :D


	7. Perpetuity

When Ian was eighteen and Mickey was almost twenty, they finally had their long-overdue argument about the military shit, albeit not the one Mickey had unintentionally been preparing for. They both had arrived at matching conclusions: he wasn’t fucking signing up. Period. Done goddamn deal. The problem was that _Ian_ didn’t want to enlist because of Mickey, and _Mickey_ didn’t want him to enlist because he _didn’t want to_. Yes, he was aware that it amounted to basically the same thing, fuck you very much. Still, no matter how many times he reminded himself that Ian’s version meant Mickey was rescuing his ass from getting a bullet lodged in it, the gnawing and irrational guilt over putting the kibosh on his dreams nevertheless won out in the end.

Actually, that was a lie.

“I wanna be with _you_!” Ian yelled at him during one of their practically identical weekly installments in an extended series of… _patient discussions_.

Mickey shook his head. “Yeah, and two fucking months ago, you wanted to be in some desert across the goddamn planet, remember?”

“So?”

“ _So_ , this really where you wanna spend the rest of your life?”

“ _You’re_ here,” he declared as though it were that fucking easy. His voice was so damn earnest that Mickey nearly lost his edge. _Nearly_.

“You don’t owe me shit, Gallagher.”

“You think I want to stay because I feel like I _owe_ you something? Mickey, come the fuck on.”

“What I _think_ is that shit would be different if it were what you _really_ fucking wa—“

It was difficult as hell to finish his goddamn sentences when Ian’s lips were constantly interrupting him, but Mickey didn’t shove him off like he probably should have. Instead, his temper immediately and very involuntarily abated. Fucking Gallagher. How was he supposed to stay mad when the bastard pulled that shit? And the eyes? Jesus Christ, he _knew_ what those eyes could do.

“What I _really fucking want_ ,” Ian echoed quietly, his mouth moving against Mickey’s and emphasizing every single syllable, “is to be where _you_ are, Mickey.”

And that was the end of that.

***

When Ian was nineteen and Mickey was twenty-one, Terry’s ass came home from prison. Well, _his_ home. Mickey had moved out months earlier, preferring a tiny fucking mattress in a room where they couldn’t bang because a teenager and a preschooler were always hanging around. And honestly, that was fine. Mickey and Ian had progressed well past the stage where they fucked each other’s brains out every hour of the day they could manage it. They weren’t a couple of queers even if they didn’t exactly hide their shit anymore, so it wasn’t like they had date nights or candlelit dinners or whatever the fuck people expected _couples_ to do. But they were equally capable of enjoying each other’s company and just doing normal shit together as they were marathon-banging. As such, the loss wasn’t as acute as it would have been in the weeks that followed the universe mirroring Mickey’s soulmate tattoo on Ian’s chest.

He _especially_ didn’t mourn the relationship he’d once had with his own fucking family when Terry found out where he’d vanished to and was screaming up at the Gallaghers’—and _his_ —house from the sidewalk one morning. First of all, it was too goddamn early for this garbage. Second, and perhaps most importantly, Mickey was kind of fucking done with that shitshow. Except for the occasional nod in passing, he and his siblings were living their own goddamn lives. Sandy came around every now and again, though he assumed that it was more to make fun of the domestic bitch she believed he’d become than any familial obligation. Independence suited them. Mickey wouldn’t trade that shit for the world. Terry? He was a nonentity. In fact, it was a relief that if he wanted to, Mickey could ignore him. Nothing was forcing him to go out there and acknowledge his old man. While he didn’t put it past Terry to burn the house down in an attempt to drive him out, the asshole also wouldn’t be aiming to get himself locked right back up mere days after being released from his latest in a long line of stints either. Inside, Mickey felt perfectly safe.

But when had a Milkovich ever shied away from a little danger? Fucking please. That would be too smart a move, and Mickey had come too far to be scared of this prick anymore. Yeah, he had a fucking life, one where he’d gotten what he wanted—where he’d gotten _Ian._ Nobody was going to take that away from him again, not even the shit-heel that used to terrify him when his courage was limited and his options nonexistent.

“Would you shut the fuck up?” Mickey huffed, descending the front steps and inwardly sighing at the sensation of all the Gallaghers watching from the living room window. “You’re annoying the shit out of everyone.”

Unsurprisingly, Terry wasn’t impressed. He must have spent his incarceration working on that goddamn sneer of his in the mirror, because it was more intimidating than Mickey remembered when he spat, “No son of mine’s gonna shack up with that Gallagher faggot.”

“Been staying here since you went in the can, bitch,” he replied with a satisfied smirk. It wasn’t _completely_ true, but who fucking cared? They’d practically lived together anyway with how often they spent the night here or in Mickey’s old room, so it wasn’t much of a stretch. Besides, it was worth it to see Terry’s face turn an unhealthy shade of purple, which merely prompted Mickey to grin lasciviously and continue, “Guess what we’ve been doing, Daddy?”

The _we’ve been fucking_ was implied. His old man wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but even he couldn’t miss that.

Really, it was pretty extraordinary that it took him _this_ long to pull the gun.

And hey, what a coincidence.

“Aw, look at that. We must shop at the same gun show,” taunted Mickey as he yanked his own matching firearm from the waistband of his jeans.

A few years ago, there wouldn’t have been a doubt in his mind that that was where he ended, that the thread of his fate or whatever the hell people wanted to call it would be cut short by his own fucking father purely because he liked taking it up the ass. Quite frankly, Mickey couldn’t claim that he didn’t deserve it for other reasons. He had a juvenile rap sheet a mile long; there were so many of his former clients who had been victims of one beating or another wandering the streets of Chicago that it was sort of surprising he _hadn’t_ gotten popped by now.

Whether it was how much he’d inadvertently changed or simply how much the universe fucking owed him, however, Mickey lived to see another day. Mickey lived to hear Terry threaten to kill him and feel his weak excuse for a shoulder-check when he stormed off. Mickey lived to step back inside the house—his _home_ —and be greeted with a can of beer from Lip and a grin brighter than the sun from Ian.

Mickey lived to hear from Iggy that Terry got himself thrown into the slammer again for attempting to buy fucking napalm from an undercover federal agent so that he could indeed burn the house to the ground.

And that was the end of _that_.

***

When Ian was almost twenty and Mickey was twenty-one, he watched the man he loved gradually lose his mind.

It was subtle. It was nonlinear. It was insidious. It hid in plain sight and pretended to be harmless. In reality, it was anything but.

The anxiety and obsessive rambling weren’t alarming right off the bat. Ian was embarking on his new dream of being an EMT after a year of saving up the cash he needed for the program without going into even more debt than Frank’s habit of applying for credit cards under his kids’ names had landed him in. Damn, it was no fucking joke. Quizzing him on shit was an exercise in futility most of the time since the crap he had to memorize may as well have been written in a different language for all that Mickey was able to understand it. Nobody could blame him for getting a little crazy over that, right?

The late nights weren’t much of a red flag either. Studying, classes, _and_ working full time to take care of his fucking family? It was no wonder he got so keyed up. Impressing upon him that running himself into the ground was going to do more harm than good was like talking to a goddamn wall sometimes, and any concerns that _did_ start eating at Mickey fell on deaf ears whenever he vocalized them. Ultimately, he’d grown resigned to walking around with his arms held out so he could prevent Ian from leaving a cartoonish hole in the ground when he inevitably crashed.

The sex was fucking great, if… _excessive_. Like everything else about Ian lately. Mickey never had a problem getting it up before, but Ian ran him fucking ragged. Not that that concerned him: who _didn’t_ get horny sometimes, particularly when they spent every hour of the day busting their own balls? And if a little private time with a sock on the door chilled Ian the fuck out, then some passing discomfort wouldn’t be in vain.

Except it didn’t chill him out. If anything, he moved _faster_.

His four-mile morning runs stretched to eight. Then thirteen.

Four hours of sleep dwindled to two. Then one.

Hyper-fixating on his EMT and, if he played his cards right down the road, paramedic shit led to a journal of ideas for businesses he could start on the side.

The room was never organized enough. Then the upstairs. Then the whole house.

The rest of them watched Ian like he was a one-man tennis match, relentlessly and indefatigably bouncing back and forth as if none of them even existed. But they did. They were there to witness him fall into his own head, crawl out of his skin, and _go go go go go_. They were there to throw around the words _sick_ and _bipolar_ and _meds_ and _doctor_ and _Monica_. They watched and they waited and they tried to say something only for Ian to promise that he was fine—he was _great_ —he’d never felt better so there couldn’t _possibly_ be anything wrong with him hey why did Lip move the mugs back didn’t he know that it made more sense for them to be next to the glasses than the bowls because they were used for the same function while the bowls were more similar to the plates and the silverware could go in the middle since they had so many uses but he could fix that later because Fiona messed up the cereal on top of the fridge they were supposed to be stored alphabetically with the nutrition label in back so you knew what you were grabbing come on why couldn’t everyone help him keep shit organized it wasn’t that hard…

A month passed in that steady, continuous shift from mostly sane to batshit to deceptively normal. Then another.

Until Mickey woke up one morning to an Ian that couldn’t get out of bed or look at him or talk to him except to practically beg Mickey to leave him alone.

Until, two days after that, Ian barricaded himself in the bathroom because he was convinced that his siblings were demons sent by fucking Satan to punish him for…something. Mickey couldn’t figure that part out. He was sort of stuck on the whole _are you here to kill me_ thing that had startled him right out of a dream barely five minutes earlier.

Until they were in the back of an ambulance with Ian strapped to a gurney while an IV kept him calm, Mickey and Fiona intermittently wiping his tears and promising that he was going to be okay. _Lying_ , really, because Mickey sure as fuck felt like that was some bullshit.

For a few weeks, it was. Three days in the psych ward. A three-tiered diagnosis of _bipolar I, acute mania with psychotic features_. Three orange prescription pill bottles: antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and sedatives.

The sole saving grace was that Ian was too doped up on meds to smell the steaming pile of crap they fed him as though they believed it themselves. But then, he was too doped up on meds to do much of _anything_. He slept and staggered back and forth to the bathroom when he needed it. Otherwise, Ian was doing his best imitation of a fucking houseplant. His appetite was nonexistent, so Mickey or Fiona or any of the other Gallaghers had to remind him to choke down half of whatever they brought. Any desire for exercise and fresh air had vanished, and it had taken the threat of carrying him down the stairs and out the door like a goddamn baby to get him on the porch for half an hour every other day. He’d stare at the tv without watching it when they coerced him into sitting on the couch for a while. He wouldn’t say a word at the table as they ate and chatted noisily around him. It was a damn good thing that his school gave him an extended pass for _medical hardship_ or whatever, because he had about as much interest in that as he did sex—which was to say, _none_.

Mickey wasn’t bothered by any of that, though. He’d long since vowed—to himself, anyway—that he was going to stick by Ian through thick and thin, good times and bad, sickness and health and all that shit. If that required counting his pills out for him every morning and gently running his fingers through Ian’s hair while he cried beneath the covers of their bed for no fucking reason and telling him to man the fuck up about his diagnosis because it _wasn’t_ a damn mistake? He could handle that. He could thrive on it if that was how shit had to be. Unlike fucking Frank, Mickey wasn’t intimidated by a little crazy, nor was he selfish enough to use it to his own advantage. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to protect Ian. _Nothing_.

But therein lay the problem: in spite of the constant reminders that Ian was merely _sick_ , that the adjustment period would _pass_ , that the battle against his own mind would be waged for the rest of his life but could be _won_ , Mickey wasn’t able to dispel the nuisance of a voice in his head. The one that sounded so much like Terry even though Mickey had replaced it with louder, less fucking ridiculous shit. It was far more convincing than it should have been when it snickered at all his best efforts and told him that nothing he did would ever be enough.

Its personal favorite torment was inundating him with its certainty that he was losing Ian forever.

And how fucking stupid was Mickey for occasionally buying into that goddamn absurdity? How idiotic was it that sometimes he’d nudge their blankets down just enough to check and make sure that his name still poked out from behind the freckles that dotted Ian’s chest like orange stars? It didn’t fucking matter. Ian was _Ian_ , even if he’d mumbled some bullshit about not knowing who he was anymore. _Mickey_ knew. Sickness, health, and all that shit? Maybe it was simply prompting _him_ to remember that this didn’t change a damn thing.

Ian Gallagher was _kind_. Ian Gallagher was _sweet_. Ian Gallagher was _responsible_. Ian Gallagher had a _temper_ like a motherfucker. Ian Gallagher was _smart_ but real goddamn _stupid_ sometimes.

Ian Gallagher was _in control_ even if he needed a bit of help with that these days.

Ian Gallagher _loved_ Mickey Milkovich, and that went both ways. It always would.

And that was the end of that.

***

When Ian was twenty-one and Mickey was twenty-three, Hurricane Monica blew back into town. Because why the fuck would the universe let them have a break for more than five seconds?

Mickey had heard the stories while Ian was navigating the treacherous waters of his diagnosis: the roof, the shopping sprees, the attempt to help Ian enlist, the Thanksgiving he’d already been told about and the nearly botched breakout from the funny farm he _hadn’t_. It was some heavy shit and far scarier when Ian was holding on by a thread, his meds the only thing stopping him from teetering over the edge into that vast expanse of fucking insanity.

Over a year later, Mickey didn’t worry about it anymore. Ian was stable. He’d stuck to his regimen because of Mickey and the rest of his family’s pleas at first, but now he did it for _him_. Sure, there were iffy moments like the quacks at the psych ward had warned them there would be. Some mornings, Ian would wake up with enough energy to power the entire city; others, he’d trudge around the house like an irritable zombie and not seem to care about much of anything. They were relatively fleeting episodes, though, nowhere near as bad as the first thanks to the chemical training wheels bolted to the sides of his brain.

Monica, as Mickey quickly discovered, was a motorcycle whose brake lines had been cut. That was the most apt description he could manage when promise after impossible, belated promise dropped out of her mouth with the weight of a feather. She was _back_ —permanently this time! She’d ditched the tweaker-dealer she’d been living with in bumfuck! She wanted to be a good mom! She wanted to be there for them! She wanted to get to know Mickey since he was so important to Ian!

She wanted to _be there_ for Ian, who those crazy doctors said was sick when they simply didn’t _understand_. Ian, who was _like her_ and needed to just be himself. Ian, who had kept in touch with her even though Mickey never understood why.

But he was learning.

Monica was definitely battier than fucking Sheila. There was no debating that. Even so, she wasn’t _all_ bad. There was an eye in her storm. The world was what she made of it, and although she was well aware of the fact that she’d royally fucked up every last one of her kids with and without her presence, she _genuinely_ meant it when she said she was going to try harder. She thought she was telling the fucking truth. She went overboard attempting to be the goddamn sunlight in their house. She never had a shitty thing to say about anybody who didn’t deserve it, and her family’s word was as good as gold where she was concerned.

When she was around to hear it, anyway. And she was. For a whopping two weeks.

The most stressful fucking two weeks of Mickey’s life, because while he resentfully found Monica to be somewhat likable, that didn’t make her any less dangerous for Ian. She was this unmedicated natural disaster that, for whatever reason, could seemingly do nothing that would permanently sever the weird ties those two had formed during her whimsical forays into domesticity.

Months prior, perhaps she would have tipped the scales in the opposite direction with that dumb fucking bullshit about his diagnosis being a big hoax. Mickey hated himself for picturing it: Ian running off like Monica, believing that there was a life out there for him where other people could ever _begin_ to comprehend the inner workings of his mind and heart as deeply as his siblings and Mickey did.

Losing him.

Missing him.

Waiting for him, and never _really_ moving on without the other half of his soul.

It didn’t occur to him that _that_ was why he did it until it was too late to take the words back. Part of him wished he could: they were some important fucking words, but they were also goddamn _embarrassing_ to hear from his own lips. That was the shit he’d sort of expected Ian to do when they were older. _Much_ older.

The other part of him had no clue what fucking difference a couple more years made. They’d been together for six already. No power on the planet could tear them apart, be it Terry’s dumbfuckery or middle-aged perverts or Mickey’s personal shitshow or Ian’s sabbaticals from reality. What was he waiting for—another fucking sign from the universe to tattoo itself to his forehead?

“Whaaat is happening?” Ian asked in a confused monotone at the bottom of the kitchen stairs.

Mickey raised his eyebrows and gestured towards the table. “Dinner. What’s it fucking look like?”

“What’s with the candles?”

“Fuck you, Gallagher.”

Honestly, he didn’t have an explanation. That was just the shit people did, wasn’t it? The candlelit dinner, the soft music, the fucking ring on the breadstick. It was stupid as fuck, but hey, he was only going to do this crap once. Might as well go all out on that mushy horseshit. It didn’t make him a bitch.

Neither did his stomach’s sudden journey from where it belonged to the fucking floor when Ian decided, halfway through the _very_ nice meal he’d had delivered from the Sizzler and put on plates with actual fucking utensils, that it was the appropriate moment to tease, “Thought you didn’t like romantic shit.”

“Don’t,” Mickey muttered, not quite sure whether it was an answer or a warning. Either way, Ian’s grin widened in apparent protest.

“There gonna be rose petals on the bed too?”

“Yeah, yeah. Keep going, tough guy.”

“You gonna marry me? We gonna go down to the courthouse in some tuxes like a couple of old queens?”

_Goddammit, Gallagher._

Mickey’s fork clattered loudly against his plate where he dropped it, his glare startling Ian into silence. Jesus Christ, was _nothing_ sacred around here?

Then again, this wasn’t exactly… _them_. Real dishes instead of paper plates; stupid candles he’d specifically purchased for tonight because all they had in the house was the shit you put on a cake. Literally paying any Gallagher that still lived here to get lost until tomorrow morning. Fuck. The most _Ian and Mickey_ element of the night was Ian being a little shit and pissing Mickey the fuck off.

That _was_ what this spectacle was supposed to be about, right? Being Ian and Mickey?

“Okay, whatever, man.” Mickey reached into his pocket, pulled out the velvet box that had been burning a hole in it since Liam helped him pick it out the day before, and unceremoniously set it on the table in front of Ian. “Ruin the fucking surprise.”

There was a deep level of satisfaction in watching Ian’s face go slack and eyes widen in disbelief. The asshole clearly needed Mickey to occasionally reinforce the notion that he gave as good as he fucking got, and boy, did he _give_ this time.

Ian was speechless as he stared down at the onyx ring Mickey had spent _way_ too much of his meager savings on. Dipping into their shared account would have been a dead fucking giveaway, so he’d been forced to stick with the shit wages he got from working on Tommy’s construction crew. Legal enterprises didn’t fucking cut it, that was for damn sure. Unfortunately, he had a feeling Ian wouldn’t forgive him so easily if he got himself thrown in the pen with his old man immediately after proposing, so he’d had to settle for far less than he would have liked. Ian deserved the best, after all.

Not that he believed it.

“You wanna get married?” he inquired with a blank stare.

“Nah, just felt like giving you a ring for my fucking health,” Mickey sarcastically replied, smoothing the corner of his eyebrow to give his hands something to do besides strangle Ian for not automatically saying yes.

“Why?”

“Fuck you mean, _why_? We fucking love each other, that’s _why_.”

“How do you know you love me?”

Mickey could hear his own mind screeching to a halt. _That_ was seriously coming out of Ian’s mouth, and it wasn’t all.

“Huh? How do you _really_ know?” He swallowed hard, the beds of his fingernails turning white where he gripped the box tight enough that it was a shock the ring didn’t pop the fuck out. “All the… All the fucking versions I am. I can’t guarantee shit. How do you know that’s what you wanna spend the rest of your life with?”

Oh, right. Mickey forgot: _that_ was the other reason Monica being around scared the shit out of him. As if Ian didn’t have plenty to worry about with ceaselessly monitoring his own fucking moods and guzzling his prescriptions like it was going out of style, seeing her buzz around with the mental lifespan of a fly shook him to his fucking core. He didn’t have to say so. Mickey had eyes. He’d been there to watch the wheels turn as Ian catalogued all the shit that he believed made him like her: the random bouts of agitated motivation that had him tackling thirty things at once until he cracked a bit from attempting to split himself into pieces; the inexplicable urge to _go_ that would suddenly seize him without warning, convincing him that he was missing out on a life he was already living; and the mornings that arrived with forced kisses, hesitantly accepted embraces, and lengthy silences while he willed his brain to get the hell off autopilot and feel _anything_. There really _were_ so many Ians that Mickey had lost count. But that shit wasn’t important. Those cogs in Ian’s head needed to take a fucking holiday.

Because Mickey loved every single Ian he’d met and would love all the ones he hadn’t yet.

And none of them were Monica.

Ian wouldn’t appreciate him playing that card, of course, nor would he take kindly to being babied. Fortunately for him, Mickey didn’t have the patience for that shit on a _good_ day.

“Look, you gonna get over the whole _I’m not worthy of love_ bullshit and marry my ass, or you gonna keep talking like a fucking pussy?”

And that was the end of that.

***

When Ian was twenty-three and Mickey was twenty-five, they got married. They even had a _wedding_ wedding.

…What? That shit was expensive as fuck. Two years of pinching every penny _barely_ covered all the stuff they wanted, and for a while there, it looked like their guests would have to bring their own damn food and booze. If it hadn’t been for some quick scamming by the rest of the Gallaghers, Kev and V stepping up to the plate, and Mickey calling in some gambling debts that he certainly hadn’t told Ian about, they’d have been royally fucked.

Instead, they were married. And that was the end of that.

Well, technically it _wasn’t_. The universe mercifully had that one covered too.

Rule number seven: when two soulmates devoted the rest of their lives to one another, they formed a new bond that would last forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not to be repetitive, but...that's the end of that! Thank you so, so much for reading and for all of your feedback and support! It's always bittersweet to finish a story, but I have plans for a few one-shots and am currently outlining a multi-chapter piece following Ian from the end of season three through his return in season four. I hope that you'll join me again for some more adventures in Shameless-land! :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> For more on Shameless, my writing, and assorted fandom madness, I'm on [Tumblr](https://pathoftheranger.tumblr.com)!


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